Lawyer's Problem
by s2lou
Summary: A house lost in the woods, a lawyer ten years older than we know her, anonymous letters slid under bedrooms doors, eight guests assembled over a secret study - doesn't that just CALL for a private eye to come and meddle with the whole matter?
1. Dissociation

Sunlight was bathing the opposite roof, just outside the window

**Author's note: so okay, I'm being suicidal **_**again**_**, but really, I can't help it. I know I've begun a KaitoAoko chapter story already, and a HeijiKazu one, but that obviously meant I would come out with a ShinRan one sooner or later. Well, that time has come. And for once, the whole story's written out before I start publishing now, so the chappies should be updated on a regular basis (let's live in hope). It's a try of a real detective story. I thought I'd give it a shot.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Detective Conan's rights. I don't own Ran, who's the main character in this, or Sonoko, or whoever's going to appear in this story, Shinichi included (yes, yes, he's in here!); I don't even own the names, I had to peel off every DC volume to find them. I'm not such a master in Japanese names. I'm babbling, okay.**

**-**

**Lawyer's problem**

**-**

"_Something wicked this way comes." _

Macbeth

-

Sunlight was bathing the opposite roof, just outside the window. It played on the tiles in delicately chased puddles of golden water, swaying and changing and blurring at the edges, when a light mist of heat screened the sun's brightness for one or two seconds, and a light grey shade challenged to take over to take over the pool of light – before a breeze shook the mist away and it disappeared in a swirl of smoke, leaving the roof's brilliance pure and unscathed.

A flash of silver, when it touched the glass of an open skylight over to the left; a faint glimmer of the roof's auburn red through the light gold; a line of blue shade just underneath the dark-grey tube of the gutter; and then below, the long surface of the wall descending to the street,– but to see that one had to bend outside over the windowframe and look downward, and Ran had other business to care about.

She appreciated the light, thank you very much, for casting itself over her writing table, thus sparing her the need of switching the lamp on in the morning; in fact, the early sunbeams flounced inside the bureau with careless familiarity, lit up the walls' whiteness and the bookcases' brown wood, and drowned the carpet in a flood of morning light. It was one of the last mornings of a summer that had been hot and shiny, and it was still enthusiastically luminous until it would eventually have to resolve in the greyer shades of autumn, and then winter.

For the moment, as foretold, Ran had other business to care about. As a lawyer (and at twenty-eight she was one of the best hopes of her generation), the reading of the morning papers, happily supplied with tons of extra coffee, was a ritual she could hardly escape to – since any occurrence, however small, even a merely insignificant _fait divers,_ could turn out important, meaningful or even crucial in cases she was working on. And she still had to survey her colleagues' trials.

Doing so, she could scarcely avoid the more than occasional mention of Kudo Shinichi's name, in the narrative of some theft of murder case he had successfully solved; but ten years ha gone way and all that it cost her now was – say, a wince, half a shrug, and she resumed her careful lecture. (When she thought about it, it was perhaps very strange that they had never confronted in court, but she wasn't going to complain about it.)

When the papers were read through, they were folded and set aside on a tablet, and the morning post passed into inspection. Bills and correspondence with her costumers formed the majority of it, accompanied from time to time by letters of thanks; she peered over them while finishing the coffee pot. Mechanical were the gestures of tearing the envelope open, extricating the paper from it, unfolding it, pouring part of her attention and concentration onto the formally printed words, reaching the signature and finally placing it aside to take up another.

The chair's back was soft and deep behind her back, and the sunlight warm onto her cheek, bathing her sitting position in an agreeable glow; and she was slowly nodding off to a sunny, drowsy dreamland when she was suddenly roused from that sleepiness by the sight of a familiar writing on one of the envelopes. She blinked, and for a second or so contemplated the letter disbelievingly – she had not received anything _written_ from Sonoko since that postcard of her friend's honeymoon five years before. Why bother writing when it was so much simpler to pick up one's phone – that was Sonoko's point, and she was rich enough not to care about telephone bills.

Astonishment acquired skyrocket proportions when, upon tearing the paper open, she discovered inside multiple sheets clumsily folded, clipped by Sonoko's scrawl-like writing.

'_Dear Ran-chan,'_ it ran,

'_We are having a problem here.' _(Ran frowned at this and read more attentively; when Sonoko didn't chat for half an hour before coming to the point and was actually serious from the start, it was necessarily important.) '_I thought that as a lawyer, you'd have enough experience on such matters to offer us help, while keeping the essential discretion._

'_You've probably seen in the papers (I know how carefully you read them) that we have welcomed in one of our secondary residences a group of scientists and lawyers who needed a quiet location for a common study – don't expect me to tell you what it's about, it's not my business to ask. Makoto and I knew some of them, and they demanded that house particularly – though I think what they want is discretion rather than isolation.'_

If it was so and the 'secondary residence' was the one Ran thought about, the choice was a good one – backed into the woods, miles away from any inhabited place, since the only neighbouring villa had been abandoned by its owners more than ten years in the past, the only access to it was a fragile bridge of string and crossing a ravine. Discretion there was an euphemism.

'_The first problem showed up two or three days before that, by the morning post, in the shape of an anonymous letter warning us not to accept our guests there – under the pretext that crimes had been committed in the house before – I'm sure you remember about that – and it was now under a curse.'_

Ran repressed a shudder that had nothing to do with cold : the window and her desk were drenched with sunlight.

'_Of course, we didn't pay any attention to it, and the guests arrived and the study began as formerly planned. The night immediately after that, however, more anonymous letters were slid under people's doors: ours, and one of our guests', both on the third floor. they were not found until morning, and the messages they contained were mostly threatening us for having overstepped the first notice and calling the house's curse upon us or something of the kind._

'_It's didn't stop there. Every morning following there were similar letters to be found on the bedrooms' threshold – nobody has been excepted and some of us have received two, or several more. The real trouble is, the author, or Poison Pen, or whatever, is necessarily someone _of the house._ All the notes have been found inside the building, during nighttime, when the gate and doors are closed, which means nobody can get in. So it must have been one of _them.

'_There hasn't been any real incident, but I don't feel good about this. Makoto and I are leaving for Mexico at the end of the week, and we don't like to leave the whole of them in the house with only one or two menservants, with perhaps a lunatic in the lot. And the letters are getting worse. They were merely menacing at first, but now they've become really frightening – I'm afraid the person who wrote them is mentally unbalanced and might turn out dangerous._

'_I know you're a busy person, but I would really appreciate it if you visited us before the end of the week. Your being a lawyer provides you with a good cover since there are two others among us, and your experience could be of some help – if not to act, at least to give us some advice. Be sure to call as soon as you receive this–"_

Ran reached the end of the letter with mixed feelings. In a postscript, Sonoko explained that she had rather not call, for fear the culprit should overhear and guess her intentions, whereas a letter posted at the nearest village was not likely to rouse suspicion; and it would have all been very well if Ran had been impressed – which she was not. Sonoko had always had an overdeveloped sense of drama. 'As a lawyer', and as a corpse-magnet-detective's daughter, Ran had witnessed worse than anonymous letters.

When she read the letter through a second time, she felt the matter deserved to be looked into further. That a Poison Pen should be counted among guests assembled over a secret study in a lonesome mansion was an interesting circumstance, and she could not very well decide of the gravity of the situation 'till she had read the letters and agreed, or not, upon their supposedly 'dangerous' consequences… there was no harm in visiting one's old childhood friends, anyhow.

When she dialled the number Sonoko had scribbled on the first sheet's right-hand corner, however, the composed voice of a manservant at the other end of the line responded to her enquiries that Suzuki Sonoko was not a home presently, and could he take a message.

Ran balanced for a second between accepting or calling Sonoko on her cell phone, then deciding to tackle the matter professionally, replied, "Yes – this is Mouri Ran. Please tell Sonoko that I have received her letter, and will visit her tomorrow in the morning." That was innocent enough; even if the message was repeated publicly, it could not mean anything serious. "If she wishes to alter this – she can call me back, she knows my number."

"Certainly, miss. Thank you for calling. Goodbye, miss."

"Goodbye."

The _click_ of hanging up on the other end, and Ran's hand on the receiver hesitated a second before putting it down. She was not altogether certain that this had been the wisest solution she could take, not considering the matter at hand, but considering some ten-years-old events. When she had last visited that secondary residence of Sonoko's, she had been fully ignorant of a knowledge that had had greatly, and not for the better, influenced some of the most important choices she had had to make later on – and going back there could very well force back recollections she didn't want intruding.

-

Ran's first surprise, in reaching the villa, was to discover that the ravine, which previously forbid any car from passing on, had in the interim been partly filled in, and an actual bridge of stone had been built over it to replace the fragile former one, thus allowing her drive up directly to the mansion. The second surprise was to find the building grown with two wings, one on each side; it now resembled one of these old Elizabethan houses overseas in England, smaller in proportion, but similar in shape.

That, she thought as she pulled up below the steps was a relief: with those differences and the ten years' time that had elapsed in between, the mansion differed enough from the one she used to know to make recollection less painful, and memory itself could but shrink. At least she'd be able to handle the matter of Sonoko's anonymous letters without something constantly snagging at the back of her mind.

The front door was opened, almost before she had time to knock, by a butler in a livrée, with a Jeeves-like poker face and the composed voice that had answered her on the phone. He gave a stiff little bow and said, drenched in cold politeness, "Mouri Ran-san? Please come in, miss. Suzuki-san has been waiting for you."

Ran was then ushered inside – the doors banging shut behind her – in a quick succession of rooms passing by, until they were at last met halfway through by one very enthusiastic Sonoko. Arms were flung around Ran's neck, a high-pitched voice's greetings, and for a second they were eighteen all over again, back to being best friends in high school.

However, when they sat together in her bureau – a large, well-furnished room with sunlight floundering in through the tall window – Sonoko recovered all the seriousness and noble mien proper to the heir of the Suzuki family. She got out a dossier from a drawer and handed it over, without a word; forced back into her position of a lawyer, Ran received it ceremoniously and inspected the letters.

Somebody – Makoto-kun, probably; Sonoko was too absent-minded to think about it – had been sensible enough to classify and date them. In shape they were all the same – black, neatly-printed letters on white, rectangular cards – and in message they varied but little: from the very first 'Do not accept that study into your house' to the last theme of 'Thou hast been warnt', the evolution was only what Sonoko had described to her in her letter – if merely menacing at first, the writer seemed to have become exasperated by the lack of reaction, and the threats had turned grim and dark in proportion.

No misspelling or grammar mistakes that she could see, and the cards were such that they could have been printed out of anyone's computer. No – the only peculiarity resided perhaps in that few letters were impersonal or generally applicable; the message aimed almost each time at a particular somebody, which tended to confirm the hypothesis of their author's being one of the guests. Ran observed this to Sonoko, who said they had remarked that, too.

"Is there anything more on these cards here, anything you can see," she asked greedily, "that might turn out as a clue? Anything that could help us discover the author of them?"

"Only that they've been printed out of a computer, which is rather clever," Ran observed. "In a book, if one was to write an anonymous letter, one would cut letters out of some daily and paste them on a sheet of paper so as to form a message without having to write anything, but in reality that's far too easily traceable. Even if one burnt the newspapers there would always remain suspicious pieces of articles that had unbeknownst flown through the window or a significant amount of ashes in the hearth. But a file in a computer – deleted with one click, and no trace to be found. It adds to the dangerous side, if anything. Is that all there is?"

"All that I know of," Sonoko answered. "Tell me, Ran – what do you think? What are we to do? Is it worth calling for the police–" (anxiously) "–because that's precisely what I want to avoid. Or some paid detective? _Anything?"_

At the mention of a paid detective, Ran's face had darkened, and for a second they had the same person in mind. Then, slowly, "If you really want no scandal, I think it's better not to call for the police – yet. Our man – or woman – doesn't seem dangerous to speak of, but he or she may become so."

"Then _what_?"' Because we can't stay like that. Makoto and I are leaving for Mexico on Sunday and–"

"–and you can't leave with an unwatched maniac ready to slaughter half your guests, I grasped that." Ran was silent for a second, pause after which she added more thoughtfully, "When exactly did you receive that first letter?"

"By morning post the day just before the study started – that's Monday of the past week."

"And then every night after that?"

"Just so." Sonoko shifted restlessly in her chair; she looked anxious and nervous about the whole business. "Most of them were slid under bedroom doors to be found in the morning, but sometimes they were found in a drawer, or under one's plate–" she made a vague, rather dejected wave of the hand, hastily checked; then a more decisive look settled on her face, and she bent slightly forward across her desk. Hands brought together on her leather tablet, fingertip joined to fingertip, she for once looked thoroughly like the businesswoman she was meant to be. "Do understand, Ran – this _cannot go on._ The Suzuki's are a rich and respectable family, and we can't – I can't – allow a common criminal to bring scandal to tarnish out reputation."

That was an aspect of Sonoko Ran was not able to understand. To _her_ mind, better risk the publicity of a police inspection than murder done – but perhaps that was only the argument of a lawyer, to whom scandals brought clients.

"Look – I'll tell you what," she said finally. "I'll stay over 'till the end of the week; and if there has been no alteration by Sunday we'll decide of what to do – whether this requires dealing by professionals or not."

Sonoko beamed at so brilliantly Ran was immediately convinced that _this_ solution was what she had tended to all the while, but she felt all the more patient and amused that she had missed the frivolity of her former conversations with her best friend. As annoying and boy-hunter as Sonoko had been at seventeen, she _had_ been her most precious best friend and the one person she could confide in – yet, what with her own life-taking job and Sonoko's constant travelling, they hardly saw each other twice a year now.

It was agreed between them that Ran would go back home that day, to fetch clothes and stuff, and then would come back the next as a perfectly genuine guest. When, however, she drove up to the sun-bathed entry the following morning, she was not met in the hall by Sonoko but by the butler from yesterday, who informed her that 'Suzuki-san had been taken away on an urgent and completely unexpected account, and would probably be late for lunch.'

He had seized her luggage and was preparing to show her to her room, when a white-dressed figure with a spot of blond hair and a smiling composure called out in a familiar voice, "Why, it's Mouri Ran-chan! Have you come to visit Sonoko-chan, or do you intend to solve our local mystery?"

-

**Yep – no Shinichi appearing in this. Don't kill me… ? And in case you wonder, the house is the one they stay over in vol. 4 (correct me if that's a mistake), and there's that awful case of the beheaded woman… it's a good location. Lost and abandoned amidst the woods… grin**

**And just to let you know, today's rather a special day for me. Not only the day I'm publishing this, thus forecasting my death in trying to finish it in time… but today's actually my birthday. Yep – I'm eighteen now. I'm a grown girl.**

**Hope you liked the read…**


	2. Meetings

"Why, it's Mouri Ran-chan **Author's note: Welcome back, minna-san! I'm glad you liked the first chapter enough to come and read the second now :) I'm trying to make this a regular updating basis – my humblest apologies, by the way, to those who were waiting for an update on Pride and… (you'll know who you are! points) It's coming, I promise. Gomen.** Since Rani-chan pointed that out in her review, I'll make that clear: this is _not_ an AU. It's mainly happening ten years after the actual storyline – bar some flashbacks farther off in the story. The Conan days are done and over with – but they definitely had an influence on this story. Just wait and see n-n

Warning: Nothing of importance. Smallish references to P. G. Wodehouse's books – I really couldn't help myself.

**Disclaimer: Me no ownies……. Alas…….**

-

Chapter 2: Meetings

-

'So far, no sign of anything sinister – but let us live in hope…' - Agatha Christie - Cat Among The Pigeons -"Why, it's Mouri Ran-chan! Have you come to visit Sonoko-chan or to solve our local mystery?"

_So much for incognito, _Ran thought while facing her former high school doctor and smiling brilliantly back. "Doctor Araide! I didn't know you were there, as well…"

"I have come down to the country for a few days," was the tranquil response, in a tone that made her think that if she didn't already know about the study and the letters, _he_ wasn't going to tell her about it. He hadn't changed much in the five years they had not met – his features had sharpened and there were small crow's-foot wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, making him look just older and more experienced. "I trust you remember my wife "

Now Ran was on for a surprise. She remembered Hikaru-san perfectly well, but last time she had seen her she had been a maid at the late doctor Araide's house. Yet, curiously, she had never suspected this result to arise from that closeness between the two young people. Yasumoto Hikaru had grown into a young mother of thirty-two, beautiful in her sort of way, with a sweet smile, a swollen belly, and in her attitude remnants of her previous diffidence.

The following minutes were pleasant enough. They recalled their former meetings, and though Araide's presence could not help but remind her of Shinichi (though unknowingly, since he had never known of her long-lost intimacy with a man who was now one of Japan's most renowned detectives, and indeed had never been aware that himself had been close to him at a time), but it was a nice dive in the past. How the medical cabinet was going, when the baby should be born, what good work herself was doing as a lawyer – so many questions and enquiries she was glad to make or answer to.

Two people passed them as they talked, deep in conversation (one of those she recognised to be a well-known politician) before they were interrupted by the butler, who, in the true Jeeves-fashion, informed them that he had carried Mouri-san's luggage into her room, and suggested that they should depart into a nearby sitting-room, where he should then be able to bring them refreshments.

It was only when they were situated in a quiet drawing-room that Ran risked herself to tackle the subject, in an oblique way. She asked after their stay, its length, the other guests; and though he answered amiably to the two first questions, the third brought restraint in Araide's voice. He mumbled a few casual words, rapidly drowned them in his glass of plum-brandy, and switched to something else.

"I came here once when I was younger," Ran attacked on another flank. "But the buildings have greatly changed. I did not know the manservant who welcomed me. Are there a great many of them? Such a grand mansion must require a huge lot of attendance."

"Surprisingly, there aren't a great deal of them," Araide answered thoughtfully. "There's Briggs, of course – that's the butler – who knows everything and takes care of everything, the porter at the gate, the cooks in the kitchen and one or two chambermaids, I think."

"Three," Hikaru-san corrected. "One for each floor."

"I only saw two. They are all the same."

Ran left them to it and relaxed in her seat, sipping carefully the brown-gold alcohol. It was just as well that the two of them should be there. It narrowed the spectre of suspects – for she _refused_ to picture them (either or both indifferently) as the insane writers of deranged anonymous letters. If anyone were ever sane, they were…

She thought she could rule out the domestics, as well – for the moment, at least. The letters showed a close knowledge of all the guests' reputations _and_ works, and who could better be informed of that but one of them? Yes – unless one of the menservants had got hired under some false name and pretended to be someone else; in which case he could be just anyone, and all the more suspect. But she could easily check from Sonoko whether one or several of their domestics had entered but recently at their service.

Those were the first moves. Yet then, what was one to do? Patrol the corridors at night? Control the guests' rooms? No, that was silly, or at least impossible on her own. She needed outward assistance, and Sonoko and Makoto-kun were going on Sunday…

Of course, there was always the police's aid, if it came to that, but if scandal was to be prevented on every account… There would arrive the press and journalists and whatnot if the police came. Then again, what would they find? Nothing, in all likelihood. The Poison Pen, whoever that was, was clever enough to destroy all proofs and present a perfectly innocent face. And that might have led to suspicion, too; only, she supposed from what she had seen and guesses of the guests so far, so they would all. _They could not risk even to be suspected._

No, what such a place and such a situation wanted was a sleuth, a nosey parker who could creep in anywhere and hear everything without being either seen nor heard. A paid detective… Shinichi…

Her mind strayed away for a few moments, then came back to the point. The best thing to do, for the moment, was to shut up and listen. In this state of things (and the letters had slowly built to a tension that was all the more likely to break rather sooner than later), it was next to impossible that nothing at all should happen till Sunday. By then, as she had told Sonoko, there was nothing to do but wait.

-

The first evening Ran spent at the mansion was nothing like she had imagined, and certainly nothing like she had thought should be the reunion of personalities gathered for a study. The atmosphere, if anything, was relaxed; if the guests were divided into groups, those seemed to have formed under the necessities of discussions and not the pressure of rivalries. Only Hikaru-san seemed to be a bit excluded from the lot, but that was only because the subjects of conversation were no objects of interest to her; accordingly, Ran went and sat by her, and engaged conversation about the baby, who was to be a little girl. She caught the glance of gratitude her companion's husband sent to her, then, as the questions and answers on both sides were slow-paced, she let her gaze wander through the room.

The rest of the guests were strewn around the room in groups of two or three; often, as perfect hosts, Sonoko and Makoto went from one to the other, and got their lot of smiles. By the heart stood two rather tall men, both dressed in dark business suits; one of them was a politician and the other a well-known lawyer. His name was Asama Taichi and Ran had always admired him and his work; it had been a shock to meet him there.

Another lawyer, a woman this time, who reminded her vividly of her own mother, was presently talking to Dr Araide, and he did _not_ look like he was having the time of his life. She probably disagreed with his entire argument and was busy breaking it point by point. A second woman sat alone beside the library, reading, - she was a strict-looking practitioner, with thick-mounted glasses encircling her dark eyes and an enormous book in her hands; she had barely looked up from it when Ran had been introduced. Sometimes, one out of the group of three people who were animatedly talking right beside her right elbow turned to ask her a question, and she answered briefly and clearly before she dived back into her reading.

At this point the conversation with Hikaru-san accelerated, and Ran got interested. Her concentration was such that she didn't hear anyone approaching until long legs stretched under her nose and a hand was extended in front of her face, together with a pair of light eyes and a cheeky, unfaltering grin.

"Mouri Ran, aren't you?" said the youth cheerfully. "Look, I'm frightfully sorry to burst in and all that, but I think I owe you a thanks."

He looked anything but frightfully sorry, seated comfortably between her chair and Hikaru's, the hand she had bewilderedly shaken now tapping a rapid, gleeful rhythm on the chair's armrest. She was fairly certain she had never seen him before. "What should you thank me for?" she asked.

"Oh, well – you saved the guvernor from the gallows two years ago, so since all his money would go down to some old cousin because of that bloody will and for now he still deigns to gratify my existence with a coin or two per month, I thought I'd drop at your knees and consume myself with gratitude, eh, what?"

Wonderful – after Jeeves, Bertie Wooster. She recognised him now – recognised the resemblance, at least. He was the son of a great industrialist whose cause she had defended in court a few years back – charge of murder. The man was a crooked swindler who had got involved in all sorts of fishy business ever since he was fifteen, but in _that_ case, he had been innocent – though she wouldn't have been surprised if he'd done it. What his son was doing here right now, though, she had no idea.

"Yes, of course – now I recognise you. And what are you doing down in the country, Kano-san?"

""Ah, please – Akira. 'Kano-san' is my father. I hate it when people talk like they'd do to my father. Discourages a fellow." He punctuated this with a dazzling smile that probably sent many girls weak at the knees; it would not do for her, though. For one thing, she was several years older than him. For another, he could very well be the author of those letters.

"Very well – and what are you doing down in the country at this time of the year, Akira-san?" she repeated, mid-mocking, mid-severe.

"Damned if I know." He shook his head sadly. "The old bird sent me, but the reason – there! What does one do in the country? This and that, I expect. Fishin' and huntin'."

Though unable to determine whether he was very clever or very stupid, Ran watched with amusement as he cocked his head to the side and called out to one of the two men who'd been talking by the hearth, "Hullo, Ken-kun! Would you mind coming over for a minute?"

Kenjin Kenzaki excused himself and approached them. He was a well-preserved man of forty-five or so, with a smiling composure and smart readiness of attitude; he seated himself among them, helped himself to a slice of cake, and looked fit to answering questions.

"That lady here," Akira-san said with a pointed look at Ran, "demands to know what exactly we are here for. Do you have an idea, by any chance?"

"Not in the least," was Kenjin-san's answer. "Nothing much. Fishing and hunting, I suppose."

""That's what _I_ said," triumphed Akira-san with a gratified voice, and having thus proved his intellectual superiority over common mortals, extended his long legs further afield, got out a cigarette, and proceeded to feel his pockets for something to light it with.

"You see, miss, this mansion is a very solitary place, so there aren't so many occupations," Kenjin-san was that kind of person who can dissert on any kind of subject once they got a start, "but the hunting season had just begun and there is a fish-full river fifteen minutes away in the forest—"

"Damn!" Akira-san expostulated from his right. "I say, Ken-kun, don't you possess one of those small items they call lighters? They come in prodigiously handy sometimes."

"I've got matches," Kenjin-san answered. He fished in his pocket, produced the box, and tossed it over to him. The creaking of the match against the sole of one's shoe, the fizzling of the flame, then the rapid shake of the hand to blow it out; one could see Akira's grin through the light smoke.

At eleven, the party broke off without a hitch. Ran exchanged a few words with Sonoko, and was able to tell her that nothing suspicious had arisen from her conversation with her neighbours; then proceeded to walk up to her room when she was stopped in mid-staircase by Sakagushi Shizue's voice calling behind her, "I would like to have a word with you, Mouri-san, if you can spare me a few minutes."

Accordingly, Ran came down again and followed the elder lawyer to her rooms, which were large and well furnished, and whose window curtains their owner impatiently drew on the night outside.

"Do sit down," she said, remarking that Ran had remained on the doorstep, hesitating. "Can I offer you anything? Tea or coffee – or brandy maybe?"

Ran accepted the brandy, feeling with some reason that caffeine, at this time of the night, would keep her from sleeping, and sat in silence while her host stirred up the fire and seated herself opposite her guest, where the flames cast reddish glimmers on her horn-rimmed glasses. She was a very beautiful woman around forty of age, with dark-brown hair gathered at her back, a well-cut _tailleur_ and a severe look – the kind of person who can get more from you in ten words than you get from her in a thousand.

"Mouri-san, I do not think myself mistaken when supposing your coming to visit Suzuki-san at this precise moment is no coincidence," she got to the point immediately, her voice serious and grave. Behind those glasses, which hid the shade of her eyes, a razor-sharp mind must be at work. "I should not be surprised at all if she had called you for the matter of those anonymous letters."

Ran might have fidgeted. Twenty-eight or no, she felt like a disobedient child faced with a particularly strict teacher. "Actually, she _did_," she admitted. "And I should warn you that you are suspected of writing them, as well as everybody else."

This, unexpectedly, brought a first, small smile. "I should think very ill of you if you _didn't_ suspect me," the lawyer said. She stood up to fill her empty glass, proposed some more to Ran, who declined, and sat back down. "I have heard much about you, Mouri-san – I even went to one of our audiences once to see you in court. You are a very talented lawyer." She paused, for the necessary protestations to fill in, and continued, "I do not, however, think you are the fittest person for _this _particular matter, yet I will do everything in my power to help you."

Ran muttered a thanks and watched her extricate a novel from the nearest bookcase and open it. "If, therefore, _you_ cannot tell me anything of your personal deductions, I can tell you of_ mine_, and provide you with intelligence others have no access to."

She displayed before Ran's eyes a whole stack of letters, fifteen or twenty maybe, all of them identical in paper, size and printing to the anonymous letters Sonoko had shown her. The messages they contained, however, differed: they were grimmer, nastier, and turned to downright obscenity towards the last two or three; the person who'd written them must have loathed Sakagushi-san very much.

Ran studied them closely, attentive to any distinctive detail, however small and insignificant, that might differ them from the letters Sonoko had entrusted her with, but as far as she could see they were similar in every way. Size of the card, size and ink of the letters, grain of the paper – she could discern no difference.

"Of course," she said, laying them aside with the intention to compare them more carefully with the ones she had locked in a drawer of her bedroom, "you might easily have written them yourself and pretended you had received them." This was alleged by the number of letters: if she was saying the truth, she must have found at least two of them per day, and very likely more.

"Of course," was the short reply.

"Do any other guests have received more letters they have not shown Sonoko?" But what could be their reason for keeping it a secret? If it came to that, why had_ she?_

"Not that I know of. But of course, _I_ haven't told them about those, so they have really no reason for telling me." A pause ensued, which she spent watching into the hearth, the silence merely broken by the crackling of the fire and a log occasionally falling down, whipping up a whirl of sparks. Ran watched her serious profile and wondered what kind of thinking was forming itself behind the thick, light-reflecting glasses.

"Mouri-san, all I can tell you is this," her host finally said, without looking at her at first. "That I have no reason whatsoever for assaulting with pointless anonymous letters such a respectable family as the Suzukis, but that I have no reliable defence to offer against my having done it." (She evidently was reluctant at using words such as alibis, mobiles, witnesses and such.) "I can, however, give you my personal deductions in regard to the matter – unless you should think I could try to influence or impress upon you."

"I'm open to suggestions," Ran said, a little quaveringly. She did not wish the older woman to be the author of the letters; her mind and faculty both to reason and to foresee would make her a remarkable opponent, and it was likely she should never pin her down to anything. "You are innocent until proven guilty, in any case."

Sakagushi-san wasted no time on thanks. "Very well. I think our man (I tend to think it is a man, for the style of the letters is more masculine than feminine, unless it is a remarkable imitation – in which case the fraud could produce itself sometime) I think our man is a very clever person. His mind must have a capacity to reason and foresee," echoing without knowing it Ran's own thoughts about her a moment ago, "and a peculiarly developed insight – too much, maybe, for him not to balance constantly on the thin edge between genius and mental decay."

She picked up the poker and piled two more logs in the hearth: flames rose briskly up, with a shower of sparkles. "I think you ought to be very careful, Mouri-san."

Later that night, as she lay sleepless in her bed and considered thoughtfully the different conversations that had followed one another at day, it occurred to her that she should perhaps keep track of the dates and incidents, in case the matter was to be handed later on to the police or to a paid detective. (Any name resembling that of 'Kudo' was kept firmly at bay.) She got up, slipped in a dressing gown, and sitting at the desk facing her bed, she took up Sonoko's dossier containing the letters.

For a few moments, she considered them in silence; in the darkness only partly broken by the glow of her desk lamp, with the gloomy nightly noises and atmosphere surrounding her bedroom like a long curtain, the neat words stood out against their white background with nasty accuracy. It was no longer difficult to imagine the ghostly figure tiptoeing down the corridors as though draped in shadows, the lunatic mind at work, writing out grim messages and threat-like notes, slid under people's doors—

She started, her heart suddenly thumping hard against her ribs: a small white rectangle of paper lay on the parquet, just a few inches from the threshold.

After the first initial shock, and once the frantic ba-_bump_-ba­-_bump­_ in her chest had eased down, she found it was not so much of a surprise after all. In fact, she had been a fool not to expect it. Her assumed ignorance of the whole study-and-letters matter was easily see-through…

She picked up the card and read it carefully. "I'll keep that in mind," she murmured, as though her voice was by some miracle able to reach the author of the words.

On the white paper, black letters wrote out, disagreeably, "DON'T COME CRYING AFTERWARDS AND SAY YOU WEREN'T WARNED."

-

To all those who expected Shinichi and were disappointed… don't kill me (again). He's in there, I swear. But you haven't, er… met him right now. (sadistic author cackles for herself) (second update in a week! Yayness!!)

Thanks for reading! 


	3. The Curious Incident

Author's note:

**Author's note: I'm actually keeping this into a regular update basis. (A feat, to my mind.) There's been this HUGE writerblock for a few weeks, but I'm outta it now. I hope. Anyway, third chapter on. Hope you'll like it :)**

**Disclaimer: Noooo, I don't own DC. If I did, I wouldn't keep my readers on such a sadistic cliffhanger every damn week. (those files will be the death of me, I swear…)**

**-**

**Chapter 3 – The Curious Incident**

**-**

"… _the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime."_

"_The dog did nothing in the nighttime."_

"_That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes._

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

-

As it had been planned, Sonoko and Makoto-kun departed on the following Sunday. A karate competition, which her friend's husband necessarily _had_ to win, prevented them from staying any longer. A reunion was held the evening before, gathering wife and husband in the library along with Ran and the Araide couple, who to Ran's relief had been proven clear out of all suspicion, since they had been sitting with her in her room when a second letter had been slid under her door, and had both witnessed her opening it.

Nothing worth notice had happened during her half-week stay at the mansion but the irregular showing up of more letters, whose rhythm of appearance was now increasing every day. Eventually, though, it would have to burst on something of larger importance; trying to prevent it would be like trying to keep the tide down or the wind from blowing: in the end it would break onto a lightening storm or a tsunami.

Ran's best advice was to remove the guests from the villa and interrupt their gathering, but since Dr Araide had opposed himself to stopping the study, and when asked, couldn't give any explanation about the study itself, she had resolved to stay and keep watch. The two letters she had received, the second pretty much similar to the first, in more insulting, had not scared her off but compelled her to stay.

It was therefore decided that the house's fate should be left within her hands. Makoto-kun and Sonoko would be returning in about a month; until then, the menservants would follow her orders like they would have followed 'Suzuki-san's' (with a little more readiness, maybe, since Ran was much more sensible than Sonoko ever was). In what concerned the letters and their author, she could not do much. Keep watching, for one thing, and then, along with Dr Araide (Hikaru's state of pregnancy preventing her from helping them), she would be able to patrol at least some of the corridors at night, in the hope to come across anything suspicious. It was probably a lost cause from the start, but other than that they could do nothing but wait.

Sonoko and Makoto-kun left at 10 am on Sunday morning. Ran accompanied them to the station, and as she drove back from the village, through the mountains, the mansion appeared to her at the junction of two wooded valleys, at the far end of the long and winding road she was on. It grew bigger and more impressive as the distance reduced, and it suddenly swooped down on her how important and of what magnitude would be her task there.

There was no, or almost no signs of human civilisation surrounding it: the stone bridge, and the other villa not far-off, which ten year's abandon and nature had led to an advanced state of decay. This was the only road, and if there ever was a rockfall down this slope it ran along… no, for even without that extreme event they were already, completely, utterly cut from the rest of the world.

It was a terrifyingly heavy weight, and for a second her mind balanced on the thin edge between staying for good and the temptation to run back to Tokyo as fast as she could. But when she arrived to the steps everything was familiar and reassuring – Briggs opening the door, as always, before she had even rung the bell, the telephone and telephone stand in the black-and-white paved hall, two guests passing her as the foot of the grand staircase, talking in a scholarly way and nodding at her before disappearing on the first floor, voices echoing cheerfully out of the billiard room – so many circumstances that compelled her to remain firmly put.

Curiously enough, Sonoko and Makoto's departure changed the atmosphere of cordiality and carelessness that had ruled everybody's relationship with everybody until now. In the large drawing-room that gathered them after dinner, the groups they separated into were less mobile and less comfortable with themselves; they spoke more carefully and in lower voices.

In regard to Ran herself, they treated her with the same kind of defiance and forced affability which suspects of a crime use with the detective charged to discover the culprit among them. Of course her purpose in being there – though it had never been explicitly explained – was implicitly known and admitted by all: now that Sonoko was gone, it was the only reason for her to stay. Apart from the Araide couple, the only ones to be perfectly natural with her were the two lawyer; Sakagushi-san because she already knew what she was about, and Asama Taichi-san because he didn't seem to care a damn. He collected her after dinner, settled them both in armchairs by the fire, and engaged conversation about a trial she had taken part in some months earlier.

"—no, you see," Ran was saying, the whole purpose of her stay almost completely forgotten in her childish excitement at talking with a man she so admired and so respected, "—what that man meant in his defence was that he'd been impelled to do the murder because of his companion's influence—"

"—of course, but if their relationship was strictly platonic "

"—never lived together—"

"—could not have met otherwise?"

"—tried to reject the crime on her shoulders at first, until he was proved outLater that evening, after the faithful Briggs had supplied her with a comfortable mug of coffee, she retreated to the windowseat—" etc.

Asama-san was a strict man, rather resembling Hattori Heizo – Osaka's prefect of police – in appearance and in manner, but as a lawyer he had a capacity of deduction and persuasion much superior to her own. In a true poker-face fashion, he could take his adversary's argument, turn it inside out, and toss it back to him with such an impassive face, as though he'd done nothing extraordinary, that disconcerted his opponent and led him to make mistakes. All of this with a few well-chosen words and a bit of bluff… It was incredible to witness. It was perfect.

Of course it was useless to question _him_ about the what, where and how of the study; he would treat her question with the contempt it deserved, and would send her off on a totally other track while giving her the impression that she'd done it all by herself. She kept, therefore, on the more solid grounds of that trial and then another, enjoyed the conversation as it was worth, and finally allowed Araide to interrupt them and start up on another subject, feeling like she had had _her_ brains turned inside out.

Later that evening, after the faithful Briggs had supplied her with a comfortable mug of coffee, she retreated to the windowseat from whence she could supervise the whole room; and wondered which of the six, maybe seven people gathered there (excepting Dr Araide and Hikaru-san) hid the twisted mind that wrote such sordid notes. Though rather tense, none of them presented any lunatic aspect: they all mastered the art of draping themselves in their reputation and innocence.

Asama-san look much too just and incorruptible to come up with such extremities, but then again so did Sakagushi-san, and both of them had more than enough brain to be able of it. Who else? Akira-san, with all his affected nonchalance and manners like he came right out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel? Ikenami-san, behind the covers of the book she clasped between her hands and her square-shaped glasses? Kenjin-san, despite his beaming composure and readiness to make himself useful? Ebihara Toshiaki-san, the stout, caricature-like industrialist, who out of the lot was the one she had never talked to, but for an occasional 'Good morning'? _Which?_

And then, of course, there was the matter of the domestics. She had asked Sonoko before her friend had gone, and the answer had been, that all their menservants, cooks, chambermaids, etc., had been at their service for many years, without ever showing any loony tendencies; second, that the only person who was known to have the brains for such a thing was the irreproachable Briggs. That would have to be checked, though…

"Emily," she asked the maid who'd come to tell her the answer to a message she'd sent to the kitchen about tomorrow's lunch, "how long have you been at Sonoko's service exactly?"

The young red-haired girl who was stooping by the hearth stopped piling up logs and stood up, rubbing her hands on her apron. She spoke pleasantly – it wasn't everyday that she was asked after her life, and that young woman, not so much older than herself, with the understanding smile and the beautiful, silky black hair, was already a favourite among the staff. "It will be six years in three weeks, miss. I was nineteen when Suzuki-san took me in – I was only a cookmaid at the time."

"And do you like it here? Isn't there anything that repels you?"

"I like it very much, miss. Suzuki-san is a very kind of woman; Everything is very easy and agreeable."

"Even the matter of anonymous letters showing up unexpectedly?" Ran asked, and watched carefully for a reaction.

There wasn't much of it. Emily's face lit up at the sight of possible gossip, and she began to talk much faster. "Oh! That, miss? Of course we know all about it – it's us who finds them most of the time, you know, when we comes up to clean the bedrooms – it really _is_ a serious business, isn't it? Who do you think writes those letters, miss?" She caught a deep breath.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," said Ran, who at the moment rather wanted to check the flow of words before Emily started up again. "You haven't happened to notice anything out of the extraordinary recently, have you?"

"Why, no, miss." Emily's tone clearly indicated that she wished she had. "Of course it's always different then usual when there are so many guests in the house and Suzuki-san and Kyogoku-san gone away for a month, there's always more work to do in the bedrooms and then some of those ladies and gentlemen guests may have such curious requests, it's quite puzzling sometimes, miss—" Second pause for breath.

"What kind of requests?" Ran asked, rapidly.

"Oh, well – things they want carried to their rooms at night, and phone calls they want through, miss—"

The lights went out.

Hardly a second of confusion had gone past, and an enormous crash and clatter of glass and wood exploded with a thundering noise in the depths of the building. Emily began to shriek – and everything was dark and hectic, sounds of running fast in the corridor, a cry of pain—

"Be quiet!" Ran's voice shouted, and then as nothing changed, "Shut _up!_ I have a torch here."

The shrieking stopped. A second's wait, and Ran's face appeared in a ray of yellow light, pale and hollow within the surrounding darkness. She averted it from her eyes and directed it on the walls, Emily's tense figure, her hands twisting her apron, and finally the window, a rectangle of black. All the lights in the opposite wing had gone out as well.

"Oh, miss! What was _that?_"

"I don't know. I'll go find out. You can stay here," she added, seeing that Emily looked terrified at the idea of wandering off in the corridors, but the maid firmly expressed her refusal at staying all alone in the dark, and together they got out of the bedroom and galloped down the passages towards the source of the noise. There were voices echoing through the panels and somebody running behind them as well; the ray from the torch swayed jerkily on the walls. Turn left, turn right, turn left and left again, and then the lights were switched back on, in a gradual succession all along the corridor, and they very nearly collided with a small gathering of people crammed together in front of a door.

Ran broke off, breathless, and tossed the torch in Emily's hands. Behind them arrived Ebihara Toshiaki-san, ill-draped in a Scottish red-and-green dressing gown, and demanding to know what the bloody hell was happening.

"We'd all like to know," said Sakagushi-san, from the doorstep. Ran elbowed her way past Kenjin-san and Akira-san and joined her on the threshold of the open door.

This was Makoto-kun's bureau, a medium-sized room usually tidy and clean. Tonight, however, it was a battlefield.

Most of the furniture had been crashed down to the floor, so that there were wood splinters everywhere, and the numerous piles of folders and files and papers that used to stand on the desk had been shred to bits and lay scattered around. The curtains had been torn down. One of the windows was shattered to pieces of glass; a chair, which now stood triumphantly near it, had very likely been thrown against it and crushed it. To complete the sight, threats had been thrown on the walls, in red paint: the pot and brush had been put neatly down in the middle of the room in insolent mockery. It had run down at some places, and pools of red liquid shone dimly on the floor, like traces of just-shed blood.

Ran took in all of this in one glance – there was probably more, less visible – and turned back to the assembled guests, all of them craning their heads to see inside and strangely dampened, almost ridiculous in their pyjamas and bedclothes. It was impossible to decide which of them looked more suspicious, less surprised maybe. She thought she'd take care of that later.

"Has anybody gone in?"

They all had, of course. They had wanted to check what was going on, before Briggs had arrived and made them stand back to prevent further damage. It was already done, though. Ran entrusted them all to the butler's competent hands with the orders to take them all to one room and _keep_ them there, then she closed the door behind her and began investigating.

It would be difficult not to step on anything: the floor was strewn with random items, sheets of paper, pieces of glass and traces of blood – sorry, of paint. It was a morbid sight. She checked, out of nervousness – no, it was paint all right. It would be useless looking for fingerprints on all this, of course – he or she would have worn gloves – but she nonetheless wrapped a tissue around her hand before she picked up anything.

The wreckage had been well done. All of this – the smashed furniture, the broken window, the torn curtains, the red-painted threats – it all combined to create a striking effect of confusion and general chaos. They couldn't have been painted in the dark, though – but the circuit breaker was situated in the corridor just outside the door, and the culprit had probably painted on the walls, then gone out and switched the current out, then gone back inside and thrown everything upside down by the light coming in through the windows, or, better, with the aid of a torch. Where was it, then? He, or she, had probably hid it somewhere…

She found it laying half under the carpet, its black surface void of any fingerprints. Nothing to be got in that direction. She could try and find who owned it; but then they would claim it had been stolen, and anyway she rather suspected it had been taken out of the house's stock at disposal downstairs. Thoughtful, she crossed the room carefully and opened the intact window, drawing the pane towards her: it looked directly into a small, grassy quad, flanked on all four sides by the buildings. Out of all the windows, only two were lit; if she had memorized the house's plan well enough, the one on the ground floor was Kenjin-san; two rows above, Ikenami-san's.

She closed the window and crossed the room again, this time looking closely for anything out of the ordinary. _Everything_ was out of the ordinary. Great. But even a small detail… the small detail that didn't fit…

She was hit full force by a wave of memories, sudden and unwanted, that roamed overwhelmingly in her mind before leaving as abruptly as it had come. She felt a fool all of a sudden, very still like she was in the middle of the room, kneeling and looking for clues like an amateur Sherlock Holmes. It was useless – there was nothing there that might be considered as a clue, that might lead her even to the beginning of a deduction.

Who was she trying to fool, anyway? She wasn't so much of a detective…

She locked the door carefully behind her and went off in search of the other guests, only to discover them in an adjacent room, where the indispensable Briggs was supplying them with cushions and hot coffee. When Ran came in they all looked up at her in expectation, hoping maybe that she had uncovered the culprit; she could not help thinking that they all relied on her now, considered _her_ no longer as an infiltrated sleuth but as one of them.

"You've seen the damage done to this room," she said, feeling somewhat ill-at-ease, after she'd grabbed some coffee for herself. "There isn't much of a doubt that it was committed by the same person who sent us all those anonymous letters." And she included herself in them, too, she realized then. "And I'm afraid there isn't much of a doubt that this person is among us right now."

Of course it wasn't a novelty, of course she was only putting words on what they'd known all along, but the change in the atmosphere was sensible. Tension was draping itself all around them like heavy velvet, and the first raindrops that began to drip softly on the windowpane did nothing to ease it off.

"The Poison Pen has wanted to show us what he – or she – was able of. I'm afraid if we do nothing something drastic may happen next time – if there is a next time. I should advocate calling for the police," Ran went on mercilessly. "It would be the surest and safest way out of this "

A concert of protestations covered the end of her sentence. Calling for the police was out of the question. It might endanger the consequences of their study. They could not allow that risk. What _could_ the police do anyway?

"It's your decision," Ran finally said to calm the growing din, "if you had rather endanger your lives but not your study. What _is_ it all about, anyway?"

If she had hoped to surprise them into answering, she was disappointed. There was no answer.

She finally sent them all back to their rooms, insisting upon their remaining there until morning; and before following her own advice she caught hold of Briggs and asked him to lock ("not only the key, turn the deadbolts as well") all doors and windows giving onto the quad. He assured her very professionally that he should this very night, and she was resuming her walk towards her room, when seized by an afterthought she ran back up to him and asked whether one or the whole bunch of his keys had not mysteriously vanished then appeared again sometime lately. The answer was, No, miss, it never had. Yes, he should know it immediately if it ever did: he always carried them himself, and locked them in the drawer of his bedside table at night. No, there wasn't any double of the key to Kyogoku-san's office, except the one Kyogoku-san himself used, and he had taken it away with him.

Of course it didn't mean much, Ran thought after she'd thanked him and walked away, any amateur burglar would know how to use pick-locks. But then again the lock on the door of Makoto-kun's office had a peculiar shape, twisted and long, with sharp angles. She didn't think any common pick-locks could make the most of it. But if the culprit hadn't entered through the door, how had he gone in?

She went back to bed and slept.

-

The next morning brought new instalments. It had stopped raining sometime around dawn, and the sky was now a clear, pale blue accentuated by the cotton-like white clouds which a pre-autumnal sweat from east to west. The grass in the quad was still wet with shining pearls of dripping water, and the windowpanes on the upper floor reflected sunlight from one to the other.

Crouching by the flowerbeds below the broken window, Ran inspected with some surprise the trampled-on plants and the beautiful set of footprints visible in the damp soil; above, traces of the same dark-brown mud that had attached to the shoes, then stuck to the white-painted wood. It looked very much like somebody had stood there then spanned over the windowframe to get in. She had checked all the doors and windows that Briggs had duly closed and locked the night before, but of course they hadn't be so before the incident…

She turned back inside and directed her steps towards the library, with the vague idea in mind to put a call through to Tokyo and warn some of clients of her momentaneous absence. When she reached the wooden doors, one of them being slightly ajar, a man's voice wandered out of it through the slit, and the words struck her so forcibly she stopped cold, her hand frozen on the doorknob.

"I've done as you told me," the voice was saying, "but nothing came out. No, nothing… You mean to say ? … Oh, yes. Rather!"

Pause.

"No – no, I'll give the money – I will. If you could only tell me who – I _did_, and nothing happened!" Silence. "But – here, listen, man – the business isn't what I was told. There's a 'tec among us now – a lawyer – Mouri Ran—" The man swore loudly. "NO, I don't know anything about it! If I did I wouldn't tell her, would I? Look here, maybe we can work this out otherwise – wait—"

A third pause, longer then the two first, and hastily interrupted by a hearty, "Good Lord! No, don't! I'll do everything you want, but don't—" here the voice dropped to a whisper, and lowered gradually so much Ran soon lost all track of it. After a few minutes she pushed the panel gently forward and peered inside. The library was deserted.

On the left wall stood an open door, through which the man had visibly gone through. If she ran now she'd probably be able to catch up with him; but she didn't need to. She'd recognised the voice right away – it had been Akira-san's.

-

**I'm aware that some of you requested the presence of – wait, I quote – 'a certain raven-haired detective' in this story. Before you definitely get to lynching me, next chapter should have more of him. I guess. I hope. Err…**

**Many thanks, by the way, to the awesome reviewers who brightened my rather homework-enslaved days T.T (gives out cyber-cookies to everyone)**


	4. To Fight Through

Author's note:

**Author's note: I'm really getting better and better on these updates. As a matter of fact, my finals are approaching real fast now (they're, what, two weeks and a half away?) and as a result of my crazy logic I'm getting to write fanfics more and more. Duh. Anyway, fourth chapter on.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own DC. DC owns me, though. That is all.**

**-**

**To Fight Through**

-

"_We only have to kill her now."_

Agatha Christie

-

Days came and passed. After the incident letters had flowed in, full of sadistic triumph, and warning them off the house for the last time before the curse befell upon them all. Unmoved, the guests and staff kept going with their daily occupations, and the various little white cards were gathered up by Ran in Sonoko's dossier. There was beginning to be pretty lot of them by now; they were kept in plastic sheets and labelled after the time and location of their discovery, "Note found on Ebihara-san's chair at 9 pm, October 11th," "Note found on Dr Araide's desk shortly before noon, October 12th."

One of them particularly was addressed to Ran: it pictured her as a cheap detective who sent people to the gallows, and accompanied by an ugly scrawl of a naked woman threatened by a guillotine-like blade over her head. Ran was so disgusted she very nearly threw it in the fire.

In the daytime, she looked out for further intelligence about the letters or the study, but on the first matter everyone was inscrutable and in the second there was NOTHING. There were no gatherings, no visits in the library, no mysterious disappearances for a few hours: they all acted exactly as though they were on vacation. Yet when she asked Araide about it, he smiled pleasantly and said everything was going on charmingly – after that she gave up understanding.

The days wore on. A queer-looking routine settled in, rather similar to the one that must lead the inhabitants of a besieged town. Not a word, or very little else, was said either about the letters or the wreckage of Makoto-kun's office; not a question was asked to Ran about the results of her investigations. Somehow, all of this was beginning to feel rather surreal. The guests passed in and out of the mansion like ghosts on a stage, the servants fulfilled their task in ethereal silence, and in the midst of all this Ran sat by her fire, read detective novels, completed her dossier and thought in capitals.

The Less Likely Suspect, The Made-Up Alibi, The Unknown Mobile, The Corpse In The Cupboard, The Hidden Murderer In The Basement – strolled carelessly in and out of her mind like uninvited guests to a masked ball, turning and spinning out of sight more and more rapidly in a sort of delicately intricate dance, deliberately confusing in their swirls of black-and-white dominos and swaying lanterns – in such daydreams her mind wandered off sleepily, touched by the hearth's warm glow and the veiled darkness around her armchair. She nodded off.

Something was bound to happen, though. The letters showed it in all their triumph: the wreckage of Makoto-kun's office had encouraged the culprit, and the failure of Ran's investigations had thrilled him – or her. "He or she will strike again," she said to Sakagushi-san, with whom such conversations weren't unusual; the older lawyer was the only of the guests who could speak of the matter freely. "And bigger, this time. I'm afraid my presence has had the opposite effect than it was meant to."

"How so?" Sakagushi-san asked severely, with the air of someone who knows perfectly the answer but wants her to say it all by herself. They were sitting together in the library at the end of the afternoon, where they'd been abandoned earlier by Kenjin-san and Asama-san. Outside, the wind was brushing against the brown-and-gold leaves, almost ready to fall, with the soft sounds of metallic rustling.

"Well – I was supposed to frighten him off, but somehow he doesn't seem very affected. On the contrary. It looks like he wants to show everyone what an amateur I am and how helpless when faced with him.

"I told you I didn't think you weren't the fittest person for this case, you know." Sakagushi-san tapped the bottom of her glass against the armrest.

"I know," Ran said, and looked away.

-

The second incident occurred the very evening – only it was much bigger than anything the first had been like. Ran had been sitting up at her desk, employed in categorizing today's letters, labelling them, and taking down in a notebook what small events had taken place since the previous entry.

'_Nothing much. A slight row between Kenjin-san and Ebihara-san, about something Ikenami-san had said. These two dislike each other very much. If one of them is the Poltergeist, the other will probably be in dang—"_

She had hardly affixed those words on the page that a crashing noise, alike in sound and in volume to a crack of thunder or the sudden roar of a motorbike, exploded somewhere in the depths of the building. It came out terrifyingly clear, and it died out just as suddenly. Ran's armchair was flung back in haste as she grabbed instinctively for the torch she left on her desk handy for all emergency, and she dashed out of the room without a second thought for the consequences of leaving her door wide open; the only thing she dared think about was that somebody had been shot.

Running and shouts. This always had to happen at night – she cursed mentally, and accelerated. Somewhere in the midst of all that confusion, a small, logical part of her mind remarked that if she even ran into somebody who went opposite, that person was all the more likely to be the Poltergeist – but no form, ghostly or visible, did cross her path. There were _far_ too many corridors in this house…

She arrived second best on the spot. Briggs had got there first, and he had had time enough to kneel by Sakagushi-san's shaking body and sustain her up. Panicking, Ran dropped herself by their side, but the lawyer was breathing regularly, fully conscious, only her shoulder wounded. The bullet had dug deep in the flesh and it bled heavily.

"What's happened?" shouted Araide from behind her; realizing Sakagushi-san's state, he pushed Ran aside and took her place. Ran got to her feet, and was left to answering the frantic questions of more guests arriving. They ceased coming after one or two more minutes. Both Asama-san and Akira-san were missing.

Ran thought she'd better handle that in the morning instead of going off in search for them; it didn't seem likely that the Poltergeist, if it wasn't one of _them_, should attack either that night. More things, on location, caught her eye anyway: the crackled mirror on the wall in front of her, partly shattered at the bottom; the golden bullet she picked up from the carpet; the small feminine pistol she found lying at the corner. Once more, it would probably be useless looking for fingerprints on the grip and trigger, but she wrapped it in a handkerchief anyway.

"How is she?" she asked, returning towards the gathered guests with her findings burrowed deep in her pocket.

"She'll be fine, I think," Araide said, inspecting the wound with the aid of one silent Ikenami-san. "You have a strong constitution, Sakagushi-san. We'll rinse this and bandage it, and then all you'll need is a good night's sleep. Briggs, go fetch some water and disinfectant, please. And large bands of gaze."

"Of course, sir."

Briggs gone, Araide directed them all towards the room in which he worked, with the promise of some whisky-and-soda for those among them whom the gunshot had shocked most. Along with Kenjin-san, he helped Sakagushi-san stand up and walk; Ran was going after them when she noticed something else.

"You coming, Ran-chan?"

"Don't wait for me," she said, absently. "I'll be right behind you."

She stood, motionless, in front of the crackled mirror; a glassy, ill-reflecting spider web interweaved its threads from the middle of the surface all over it to the edges. To mark it that way, the person who had fired must have been standing directly in front of it – and the bullet had hit the mirror and shot right back.

-

When she got back to her room later into the night, once whisky-and-soda had been administered to all those who needed it, and the wound had been cleaned and dressed properly, she found that her dossier had mysteriously gone away from her desk. Cursing, she switched savagely the lights off and got into bed. It was not after a hour of tossing and turning and fancying she saw ghostly figures hovering in the corners, that she eventually sank into a restless sleep – and dreamt of blue eyes and an interrupted kiss from ten years in the past.

-

The dossier reappeared again in the morning, just as mysteriously as it had vanished the evening before. When she opened her bedroom door, feeling refreshed and her ideas clearer, she found the folder standing neatly against the wall outside, its contents untouched in insolent mockery. Between two pages had been slid a card with the words, in red ink, running along the lines of, "So much work for so little results—"

Rather out of helpless revenge than of professional acuteness, she took it back inside, labelled the note carefully, secured it safely in a plastic sheet, and locked the whole in a drawer.

She caught hold of Briggs in the hall and asked him after it. The butler's face mustered as much surprise as it could in all its impassibility and said, "I am perplex, miss. I have brought your shoes, once polished, in front of your door at six o' clock this morning, and I am positive that no such thing as a folder was laying there. I would have let you know, miss. But perhaps Emily, who is in charge of this corridor, can enlighten you on the matter."

Emily, once summoned, was indeed able to narrow the spectre of the possibilities. She had through that corridor that morning, on her way to the attic, because Cook had asked her to bring to the kitchen the lot of old pans that were stored there, miss, because she said turtle soup was always much better when it was boiled in those old brass pans—("Stick to the point," Ran reminded her) and, yes, she _had_ seen that file – or folder, yes, miss – standing against the wall. That would be around seven o' clock, maybe a tad sooner. No, miss, she daren't touch it, because she feared it might be booby-trapped or something, what with those letters and Kyogoku-san's office and that poor lady shot—

"Ah, yes, the letters," Ran interrupted. "Has any of the other servants – or the cooks – received some, do you know?"

"If any of us had, you would already know about it, miss," Briggs said, a little stiff in his manner – reproachful, maybe? – and Emily put in, "_I_ didn't, miss, and I'm sure the other girls would have told me if they had, and Cook, too, because she quite likes me, not like poor Ann – 'I do wonder who's doing all this trouble,' she said to me only yesterday, just like that – but that was before we heard of the poor lady shot, or we wouldn't have talked of it that way—" and so on.

When Emily's diatribe was over, Ran thanked them both and, after a moment's thought, went straight into the library. She sat there in her favourite armchair, stared outside the window at the autumn trees that were bedecked with brown and red-gold leaves, and resolutely began to brood.

She brooded on for long minutes. There weren't so many alternatives now; the situation had reached a crisis. Besides, it was all out of her hands. They couldn't allow anything like yesterday to happen again – next time, it might be fatal to the victim. She wasn't altogether certain the first attempt had meant to be so, but – Anyway, the exterior world could no longer remain out of this.

Not for the first time, but with a greater sense of alarm, she realized how acutely the case in hand had reached a critical and dangerous point, how absurd and hazardous was their gathering, how stupid the simple _fact_ that they should remain there, in this grand, unreachable house, at the mercy of any passing lunatic. _She_ shouldn't have accepted to come into the matter at all; it had done more bad than good.

"Ikenami-san," she called out to the practitioner as she passed the library's doors, "do you happen to know whether Sakagushi-san is feeling any better, this morning? Will she be able to leave her room?"

The elder woman stopped dead in her tracks and glared at her with such intensity Ran might have just insulted her. "Yes, she will," she said stiffly, almost grudgingly. "She has been very properly shot. There won't be any after-effects."

"There won't? That's great. In that case, would you mind telling her (and any guests you happen to come across on your way) that I should like to see them all in the—" she hesitated. Not here; this library was a place for peace and silence, not for many people talking loud together and arguing. "—in the sitting-room in the left wing, first floor."

"Certainly," was the short, severe, almost rude answer.

"Thank you. I'll see you there in fifteen minutes." Ikenami-san walked briskly away, and Ran remained where she was. She touched the bell after a second's reflection, and asked Briggs what she had just asked the practitioner. If all the guests were assembled in the good room in due time, it was certainly thanks to _him_.

Sakagushi-san appeared supported on one side by Araide, on the other by Hikaru-san, and was seated in the deeper and most comfortable armchair, which Akira-san sprung from at her entrance and hurriedly left at her disposal. She appeared to be very feeble, but her sharp grey eyes met Ran's with unmoveable determination.

Discussion would be hard.

Her account of yesterday night's events ran thus: around half-past ten the evening before, she had been sitting by the chimney, reading, when a small card had been slid under her door and heavy, rapid footsteps could be heard running down the passage. (This was confirmed by Kenjin-san, who indeed found the note laying on the floor when he'd helped her back to her room.) She'd gone after him, of _course_, not forgetting to take her lamp torch with her, but the man was as elusive as the shadows themselves – in fact, he always seemed to tear past a corner the very moment she reached the corridor he'd just left, so that the light ray never showed anything more than the rapid swirl of a sleeve or a disappearing leg.

"Are you quite certain it was a man you saw?" Akira-san asked in a plaintive voice – almost anxiously, Ran thought.

"I'm positive. The footsteps were too harsh and heavy to be a woman's – unless she was wearing very strong shoes, which wouldn't have been all the most practical for running," Sakagushi-san said, considering. She fell into a contemplative silence, out of which Ran eventually had to urge her, by prompting her to continue.

"Yes – sorry. I don't know exactly how long this running lasted – it felt like centuries, but it can't have been more than two, maybe three minutes. We kept on the second floor all along. I think we passed your room once, Asama-san."

"You did," he said. "I heard you."

"Yes. Well, after some time that man suddenly rounded back on me, or took another passage, or waited at a corner, for I collided with him then. My torch dropped and I think broke. That's when he shot me – only he shot the mirror. He must have seen my reflection and fired, thinking it was me… the bullet made a rebound and hit my shoulder instead. I think I shouted – and he heard voices and got frightened, and fled."

Ran scanned the faces while the older lawyer talked of that fight and flight, hoping to get some involuntary reaction of – something, indignation or leer maybe, but they were all a set of polite, attentive blanks.

"Something puzzles me, though," Sakagushi-san was adding as an afterthought of her sensible mind. "I'm almost certain I heard his revolver fall down on the parquet – it made a metallic sound. But if none of you found it," looking round, "I suppose he must have recovered it when he rushed back in with everybody else."

"As a matter of fact, he didn't," Ran said, making all of them start. She fished the pistol out of her pocket and laid it neatly on the table, where it stayed for a second in the utmost silence. Then—

"That's mine," Sakagushi-san said.

Sensation. Ran glances rapidly at her then back at the revolver. It was small and thin, easily handled, its black grip standing out against the golden sides shining in broad daylight. It was certainly a woman's gun. "Are you quite certain ?"

"It is, anyhow, similar to mine in every point." She picked it up, careful to touch only the handkerchief, and turned the cylinder open. "Five bullets – and there were six in mine. One shot fired." She clicked it shut. "I keep my gun ready for all emergency in the top drawer of my desk – I saw it there only yesterday morning. That will have to be checked, of course."

Briggs was dispatched in verification and Sakagushi-san handed the gun back to Ran. "You'll want to keep it, I suppose."

Ran wrapped the tissue more tightly around the revolver, pocketed it, and waited for the noise to settle down. They were all talking together, rapidly, confusedly; like horses, she thought, scenting a thunderstorm hovering close and trying to break free of their stalls. They all knew what was coming – they all knew what she was going to say. Ebihara-san stood abruptly and walked over to the window, where he stood with his hands in his back. Ikenami-san lit a cigarette with nervous, irritated gestures. Akira-san laughed sheepishly. It seemed that the room was but one, immense held-back breath.

"Of course, you understand this cannot go on after such an accident," Ran said, each word from her building up a tension that weighted heavier and heavier on everyone's shoulders. Silence fell when she had finished, it was sharp and cold. People stared at their feet, or stared resolutely into complete emptiness.

"We cannot allow any similar event to occur again," Ran went on mercilessly. "I'm sorry – I cannot do anything more for you. It's all out of my hands – we _have_ to call for the police."

Briggs was helpful enough to come in then and say that the top drawer of Sakagushi-san's desk was void of any pistol. "In all likelihood, miss, the culprit has taken it away." Eyes glared at him, but Briggs, master of deadpan, stood his ground impassively.

"Thank you, Briggs," said Ran. "So you see, minna-san, what the situation is like. Our man, or woman, is ready to rob and murder to reach his or her objective – whatever it is. We can't permit that risk, I'm sure you understand that."

"We can't really interrupt the study—" Araide began.

"The police here is out of the question," Asama-san said gravely.

"Do you have any other alternative to offer?" Ran said with irritation. "Does any of you happen to have a brilliant idea to stop the massacre? Would the culprit – who is, I remind you, among us right now – kindly unmask himself?"

"Maybe the police itself – the official police isn't necessary. Constables here will never do. But someone like a detective – paid to be silent, paid not to make any trouble – would be more to the point. Discretion – it would not only prevent scandal, but the man would also be able to investigate more quietly, with perhaps better results."

Ran's heart skipped a beat. She had seen this coming all along – she had braced herself against it, but when she had recovered her hold upon her senses, the snowball had taken momentum and was already rolling down the hill. Agreements or protests filled the air, fused with the quickness of flashlights, as all the guests immediately grasped the buoy that had been thrown among them. A paid detective, yes – but somebody capable, somebody who knew what he was about, but somebody also who wouldn't call attention onto them, who was known to make long absences…

Ran closed her eyes.

The name of Hakuba Saguru was advanced – he was famous for being half-British, and to travel often. But that would not do. He was in England at the time, working on a particularly though case – it was all in the newspapers. Besides, no-one here had even met him, not to speak to, and they needed someone trustworthy, someone entirely reliable, whom at least several of them knew…

And then Asama-san proposed, in his low, grave, serious voice of Doom, "I suggest we call for Kudo Shinichi."

-

**Aaaaannnndddd… CUT!**

**(very sadistic author loving cliff-hangers only when she's making them up)**

**Aww, come on. You'll see Kudo-tantei next chapter. And the way it's going, that should come out sooner than expected. (I hope.) Here, take a cookie (even if that's poor making-up for the absence of our favourite raven-haired detective…)**


	5. Supposed To Go On

Author's note: Author's note: (just going to quote extracts from some reviews because they made me laugh so much): "_ME WANTS TO SEE SHINICHI!" "Patiently waiting for Shin-chan to magnificently enter riding on an elegant horse here." "Waiting to see Shinichi butt in!" "there's a small appearance of a certain raven-haired boy you need to add." "that was NO insinuation indirectly remarked towards the author to FINALLY, after interminable centuries, stop being Gosho's mean buddy in torturing us, and reintroduce the actual MAIN character in the story. Not at all."_

**author presently laughing so hard she's rolling on the floor… please wait a second…**

**Ahem… sorry for that. (wipes tears) So, if I understood this well, you want to see Kudo-tantei. (is that it?) And I'm keeping you up with my babbling. Yep, I'm sadistic today. (blame those godforsaken finals, if you must.)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own, gah. Don't rub it in.**

**-**

'If anyone did a dishonourable thing and then said it was for one's own sake, it would be the last insult. How could one ever feel the same to him again?'

Dorothy Sayers

-

The sunbeams were dancing lightly on the tiles of the deserted classroom, golden flickers swiftly swaying, gliding, disappearing on the smooth, shiny surface of the floor. Higher, they met the students' desks, emptied now, the chairs left behind one last time by their occupants – and played there, cheerfully, with the pending shadows. It was a bright, hot day outside, and shouts and laughter came echoing up from the grounds, half-muffled by the closed windows and the three stories below.

_Ran was sitting on the desk which had been hers and which, when she would leave the classroom, wouldn't be anyone's – ready to welcome a new owner in a few weeks. Eyes closed, she let the warm sunlight caress her face; beside her hands, her diploma was standing on the creamy surface of the desk. Sometimes, among the flood of memories she allowed to master her thoughts for the one last time, fled through her mind the reminder of Sonoko and their bunch of friends waiting for her outside, ready to go celebrate their graduation, but she snapped it away. A few more minutes… just a few more minutes…_

_Moments more, and the classroom could still be a fantastical place where time-wraps and hypnotism were not uncommon; but when she would slide the door shut and walk down the corridor towards the stairs, it would come back down to an ordinary room, silent and empty but for those playful sunbeams. Agitation and cheerfulness would come in handy later on, but for the moment peacefulness did just as well._

_Silence._

_She opened her eyes, and saw Shinichi standing in the doorway._

_Not looking at her – not looking at anything, in fact. In one rapid glance she suddenly wished she could have checked, Ran took in all his lean, tall figure – the dark hair, the pure lines of the profile, the touch of shade where neck met jaw, the shoulders, open and slightly broader than they used to be, the long, nervous hands – one trailing off on the doorframe, the other holding a diploma just like her own._

_Then, just when her gaze began to travel down his chest, he seemed to focus again, and his eyes fixed on her – piercing-sharp blue, pulse racing, blood throbbing, pain. She felt mildly ridiculous, but, at the same time, intensely aware of him, of his body, and all that it mattered in the world._

"_Ran," he said, with a sharp nod. His voice was deeper and more serious than she'd expected, and it caught her off-guard._

"_Shinichi," she greeted, in as cold a voice as she could muster. The words escaped her lips before she could catch them back, "What are you doing here?"_

_He shrugged. "Same thing as you, obviously. 'Came to take a last look at our old classroom."_

_The unsaid 'Elementary, my dear Watson' floated between them like a ghost before it disappeared, drowned in Ran's acre reply. "Of course, it isn't as though _you_ were very long in it," she said, glaring at him. His eyes met hers halfway through, steadily._

"_No, I haven't," he said dryly. His voice was taunting, defying her to complain, to protest, to come – at last – to the point. She knew exactly what it would all take – the shouting, the accusation, the quick succession of retorts shot from mouth to mouth that she had rehearsed in its merest details while she endlessly paced her room at night, unable to decide – what it would cost… she shook her head and left it unsaid._

_He sighed – a long sigh, maybe he'd been holding it in all that time, and sat on his desk just like she sat on hers, the sunlight bathing his face. Inside, every muscle in his body must be tense, and every fibre of his being tended towards her and whatever she should say – but otherwise his perfect composure of nonchalance and self-enjoyment could have fooled anyone. Ran wished he would go to hell._

"_So. This is good-bye, Ran?"_

_Her name rolled on his tongue with an amusement he was probably far from really feeling. It was an actual question, putting all the choices in her hands and leaving her to stare at them. He was looking at her with an air of mild curiosity, as though he was only waiting for her answer, as though it wasn't going to reassess the whole complex of their relationship – with a small, floating smile. The corners of his mouth were sad and tired._

_She parted her lips without even knowing what she was about to say – but then suddenly (not fast, but in a swift move she should have seen coming but didn't) he was no longer sitting on his desk but pinning her down against _hers_, his thumb brushing down her chin and he was kissing her, one hand stroking her hair in her nape and the other flat on the desk, half-covering her own. And Ran – karate-champ Ran, kicking-ass-master Ran – could only gasp in surprise and grasp at his shirt with her free hand._

_He kissed her surprisingly in kind. He was gentle, yet at the same time highly possessive (god knew how he achieved that); and that kindness and gentleness kept growing more and more like a swelling balloon – a softness so careful it was painful. Never, never in all the times she had imagined kissing Shinichi, had she thought it would be so sad – and so delicately, excruciatingly beautiful, like a fragile chiselled construction of glass, that has been thrown high in the air, has reached the climax of its height, and is slowly making to fall._

_Oh god, she was melting. She was melting in his arms and in the sunlight._

_Then he broke off, abruptly, suddenly, and his fingers left her hair; she felt the vibrations of his voice when he murmured in her ear, "Gomenasai, Ran. Sayonara."_

_And his warmth was gone, too. He picked up his diploma on the desk that had been his – the desk she had furtively glanced at so many times – and exited the classroom, and he didn't look back. The door slid shut._

_Ran was left to stare at the glittering pieces of glass in the sunlight._

It was the sunlight that woke her up. It flowed inside her room in pale-gold rays, glistening all the way with sparkles of elusive dust, while outside the sky was a clear, fresh blue. A breeze could be seen shaking the trees' branches. She realized she was swimming in an ocean of white bed sheets.

She straightened slowly and put her arms around her knees, silky black hair tumbling down the back of her white nightgown. The ten-years-old dream lingered a moment then reduced, giving way to a strange, echoing replay of last night's conversation. Asama-san, explaining that he had met Kudo Shinichi over several cases and he had the most complete trust in his detective skills. Sakagushi-san, agreeing that he was a remarkable young man and was fit for the job. Ikenami-san, drawn out of her silence to admit that his capacities of investigation and deduction were truly impressive. The concert of protest from the whole set of guests, assembled in praising him and decreeing that he was The Man We Need.

And then, of course, they had applied to her. She was the most neutral person of the lot, the best informed, the central axis– the only one who could explain the matter professionally, as a lawyer, without prejudice and without anything to conceal. And she, like a fool, had accepted to write the letter – since a phone call would be far too long and awkward – and in doing so had equally accepted to remain within them and meet him as legally responsible of the case.

Ten years were such a heavy gap…

But the twenty-eight-years-old lawyer was already resurging, her mind set on tackling the subject in an accurate, professional, perfectly genuine way. It would have had to happen sooner or later anyway – meeting again. Better now and be done with it than looking forward to it with anxiety every damn minute of her life…

She had her breakfast brought up to her room that day, and spent most of the morning sitting at her desk in front of a blank sheet.

Professionalism or no, personal circumstances came bursting in anyway, whether she wanted it or not. What were you supposed to say – to write, even, to someone who had been your best friend your whole childhood, whom you were supposed to hate now, whom you hadn't seen for ten long, heavy, overwhelming years? How were you ever meant to address that someone again? What _could_ you do, when you were supposed to have gone on living without him?

The heading in itself was already a problem. Years and feelings came furtively into the lot, entangling themselves with words, intertwined with meanings, and generally produced chaos out of what should have been order. Both the formal 'Kudo-san' and the more familiar 'Shinichi' felt insolent, out-of-purpose and disrespectful in their way. And then, of course, the whole letter derived from that. Explaining the matter of the letters and Makoto-kun's office and Sakagushi-san being shot would not cause much trouble, if correctly, legally put, but that was only the skeleton and—

After hours – it seemed – of sitting and standing and pacing and sitting and standing and pacing and – such, she thought to go down to Dr Araide and Hikaru-san's rooms, or wherever they were now, and lay the whole problem before them. They had never met Kudo Shinichi – not to speak to; they had never been aware that they had known him at a time – nor had they ever known of her relationship with him. Surely, if they understood the actual point of the problem, they would placidly undertake, with no guilty conscience, the writing of the letter–

But no. This concerned her only; she would not have anybody exterior to this coming in. She certainly wouldn't let Shinichi come to the manor before having him know what he was in for.

Rough drafts carpeted the floor, where they had been crumpled and thrown away in irritation. The bedroom was bathed in luminous sunlight flowing right in through the window, and which the glass crystallized into a thousand tainted glitters. It was beautiful day outside, clear and sunny, calling for exercise and sunbathing – and instead she was stuck here, reduced to confront herself with what had happened in the past and should have remained there.

At length, however, she took a decision. The problem was not so much those ten-years-old events but the fact that she, as a lawyer of twenty-eight, was not able to dissociate herself from the eighteen-years-old schoolgirl who kept hinting at things in her mind. Once locked away carefully, she would no longer be able to prevent her writing a business letter from a professional to another… yeah, right.

An hour later, she was able to look onto her work with feelings akin to satisfaction. It was everything it should have been from the start – detailed, accurate, politely formal and as impersonal as she should have wished for. It was neither cold nor conspicuous – from Ran to Shinichi, it may be surprising a letter, but to Kudo-san from Mouri-san, it was the very thing.

She ran down to her car and drove rapidly to the village, where she dropped her letter in the public mailbox, feeling as she watched it disappear that in all likelihood she should regret every word she had written every night until she got an answer. She wasn't disappointed.

-

Routine was an old friend by now. Ten years tended to soften the hearts, and it so happened that Routine sometimes dropped by around half-past four, sat down with him, and had tea. It was a silent and inscrutable companion, but it was better than no companion at all. Besides, he liked it that way. He was okay with this life.

Ten years had brought him everything he didn't yet have at eighteen – consecration, reputation, more relations among the police, among lawyers, among his fellow detectives. At twenty-eight, he was famous, intelligent, well-off, run after – he had everything he had ever wanted, in theory. In practise… well. He'd gone on living, hadn't he?

One day, however, Routine did not fulfil the appointment that had been implicitly created between them. That day October was nearing its end, and dusk outside was shadowing the shades and shapes of the street, where lampposts were lit at regular intervals like floating yellowed orbs standing out of the foggy darkness, when his secretary – an elderly woman who had worked for his father before him and had always been seventy-six – brought him the evening post. He thanked her, told her she could go home now, and seated himself in one of the comfortable armchairs of his office, whose walls were lined with dark-brown bookcases, to flip through them.

Business letters, business letters, business letters. Bills. One or two letters of thanks from former guests, which he read with pleasure. The armchair was drawing him in its depths, the glow of the lamp onto his lap was warm and cosy, and the day had been a long one… he was beginning to feel sleepy… he would have nodded off if one letter in the lot had not stirred him out of his torpor.

In substance, the envelope was not any different from the rest of the others – there were his name and address neatly inscribed on it, the stamp and postmark indicating that it came from a small village whose name seemed to recall something… he was not exactly sure what. Apart from that the only difference with all the rest of the post was that it was handwritten – and this handwriting he would never have been able to confuse, even out of a thousand.

Shinichi?

Surprisingly, there was no shell-shock, no cracks of thunder, no bolts of lightening striking him numb – no flashes of relentless memory, either. He stared a good bit, then turned the envelope over – nothing written on the back – and ripped it open. Inside he found two sheets of writing paper crammed with the same neat, thin handwriting. As he unfolded them and searched for the heading, his heart beating maybe more rapidly than it usually did, his secretary's head popped up in the doorframe.

"Good evening, Shinichi-kun – or do you need any help with those?"

"No – I'll be fine, thanks. Good evening," he said distractedly. The head popped back down and footsteps creaked away. After a few minutes he heard the front door open and close with a fine slam. Remarking his body was tense, he tried to relax against the cushions and accorded his full attention back to his letter.

_, October 22__nd_

Dear Kudo-san—

He sighed, and burrowed herself deeper in the armchair. He had seen that coming a mile away. Bracing himself against whatever blows were to come, he went on reading.

-

Every day after she'd sent her letter Ran expected to receive an answer, and every evening that passed untroubled brought more irritation for the next morning. And the universe seemed to have made a point of attacking her every time it could manage with more and more expectation – she would always be right in the way when the morning mail was brought in, or Briggs would always be on the phone, nodding carefully and taking down messages, when she came down the grand staircase. It didn't fail that morning either.

Briggs had rang off by the time she had reached the hall. "Anything for me, Briggs?" she asked lightly, all the more casually that she had asked him every morning for half a week.

"Yes, miss. Kudo Shinichi-san just called."

Pause. She was evidently supposed to say something then, but her mouth had gone extremely dry. Which was silly, she reflected with irritation, it had to happen sooner or later. "Ah. I'm sorry I missed him. Did he leave a message?"

"Yes, miss. He said he would call on you tomorrow morning. He couldn't say the hour precisely, but around ten or eleven."

"Oh – thank you very much."

And that was that.

-

**So let me get this straight: a flashback, Shinichi's eventual apparition in this story, a goddamn KISS for goodness' sake and the promise of a meeting between our two ten-years parted lovebirds next chappie… don't I get a cookie?**

**xD just kidding.**

**Well, ja! I'll try to update evenly again… I'm actually proud of myself here ;)**


	6. What's Unsaid: Tension

Author's note:

**Author's note: I am SO sorry for the lateness of this update. Granted, I had other things in my mind (aka the whole updating-so-I-can-breathe-ever-two-damn-days business), but that's no excuse. (bows a little) (gives cookies) (on reflection, gives more cookies)**

**Disclaimer: I don't think I'd be here writing fanfiction if I actually **_**owned**_** DC.**

**-**

**What's Unsaid – Tension**

**-**

_Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to happiness._

Bertrand Russel

_Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking round in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell._

Edna St Vincent Millay

-

The sunbeams were dancing lightly on the tiles of the deserted classroom, golden flickers swiftly swaying, gliding, disappearing on the smooth, shiny surface—

–_she let the warm sunlight caress her face; beside her hands, her diploma was standing on the creamy surface of the desk. Sometimes, among the flood of memories she allowed to master her thoughts for the one last time—_

–_and walk down the corridor towards the stairs, it would come back down to an ordinary room, silent and empty but for those playful sunbeams._

Somewhere, in the small part of her mind that the dream couldn't quite reach, she felt she was bound to wake up, despite the struggling of the dream pinning her down to her bed, bound to wake up because something somewhere was important in the present, yet she wasn't quite sure—

–_glance she suddenly wished she could have checked, Ran took in all his lean, tall figure – the dark hair, the pure lines of the profile, the touch of shade where neck met jaw, the shoulders, open and slightly broader than they used to be, the long, nervous hands—_

–what. The white sheets entangled around her limbs, bidding her to the bed, keeping her prisoner when there was no escape from her head anyway.

"_Ran," he said, with a sharp nod. His voice was deeper and more serious than she'd expected, and it caught her off-guard._

"_Shinichi," she greeted, in as cold a voice as she could muster._

In the pale bedroom strewn with sunlight, on the grand double bed, she lay restlessly like some kind of madness-stricken person. Her hair scattered raven-black among the white pillows…

_She knew exactly what it would all take – the shouting, the accusation, the quick succession of retorts shot from mouth to mouth that she had rehearsed in its merest details while she endlessly paced her room at night, unable to decide – what it would cost…_

And all this crystallized into the dream, feelings and emotions that had been kept at bay for ten long years, that had been pushed away restlessly and yet kept coming back, and it was only now, in all the helplessness of sleep, that they finally took control of her senses and—

–_an actual question, putting all the choices in her hands and leaving her to stare at them. He was looking at her with an air of mild curiosity, as though he was only waiting for her answer, as though it wasn't going to reassess the whole complex of their relationship—_

–sensations. Looks and glares and laughs and talks and shouts and tears and calls and voices and—

–_but pinning her down against _hers_, his thumb brushing down her chin and he was kissing her, one hand stroking her hair in her nape and the other flat on the desk, half-covering her own. And Ran – karate-champ Ran, kicking-ass-master Ran—_

–sensations.

_A fragile chiselled construction of glass, which has been thrown high in the air, has reached the climax of its height, and is slowly making to fall._

She jerked awake, and for minutes lay on her back senselessly staring at the ceiling, while the last pulses of memory eased and calmed their throbbing in the silence. She took long, deep breaths as she sat up, wiping sweat from her face, and gazed vaguely at the sunlight-bathed, window-shaped rectangle on the floor. The glow was less brilliant, less warm than it used to be, it was more autumnal; outside, the leaves were radiantly red and gold. That was changing, too – endlessly.

_She was melting. She was melting in his arms and in the sunlight._

She shook her head and hastened out of bed. She was shivering with cold but she nonetheless flung the windowpane open, enjoying the way the lingering remnants of fantasy and confusion from her dream all drifted away with the morning's sunlight and warmth, and left her as only companions rational thought and sensibility. More than enough, considering the events of the day to come. Imagination left her mind like a bird taking flight, and she was brought with the more serious matter of her wardrobe.

She selected clothes, matched them, put them on, checked their effect in her mirror. Changed her lawyer's tight skirt for dark pants and a black shirt. All this black made her dressing strict enough, but the clothes themselves weren't too severe. It fit the circumstances. Her hair. She left it loose, having hesitated for a low knot – a sharp, tight bun would give her the looks of Sakagushi-san's.

Morning gestures – routine gestures – everyday gestures, and she accomplished them with vague eyes and a wandering mind. She rather felt like a soldier on the last morning of his leave; a few more hours of freedom and peace, and then back up to the front.

She glanced at the clock when she was done; it was half-past nine. Just enough time to take a rapid breakfast and then retreat within the boundaries of the library, with her dossier and her proofs, to sort out her notes and the letters and her share of reality more properly before she would have to hand them all over.

-

The drive was a pleasant one – or at least it would have been if he hadn't had other things in his mind, and had had leisure enough to watch the panorama. Forests and valleys and mountains elapsed by without his focusing on any other thing than the road, and his thoughts.

When he arrived within sight of the house, he stared at it like an awakening man, and as he pulled up in front of the grand building, got out of his car and walked up the steps to the main entry, he couldn't help remembering the last time he'd come here. It hadn't been a happy time altogether, but… it had had its moments.

The door was opened by a caricature of a butler, standing stiffly in a strict swallowtail coat, who bowed a sharp bow and said, in a pregnant voice, "Kudo-san? Mouri-san has been waiting for you. Please follow me." And ushered him in a collection of rooms and passages, without their ever meeting anyone else than a grey-clad maid who scurried away with a muffled shriek, like a small, frightened mouse.

Mouri-san. Yes, of course, she was Mouri-san by now. Likewise, her letter had been a polite, formal, business-only one, with a precision and accuracy that allowed no suspicions to rise: she was legally in charge of the case, and _his_ presence had been requested by some of the guests she had mentioned, point made. Himself had been professionally interested in the problem, or – very likely – he shouldn't have come.

He and his guide finally reached a grand double door, masterly carved out of oak, whose pane the butler opened without knocking and then stepped aside to let him in. And for the first time in ten years, Shinichi was faced with Ran again.

For a fraction of second, the mere holding of one's breath, she was exactly like she had been at eighteen, sitting like she did at the windowseat, notebook and pen and papers laying abandoned on the desk before her, and her eyes fixed on the trees outside with her cheek leaning on her palm and a vague expression as though she had not heard the door open. She was wearing a black shirt that finely outlined her slender bust, and her hair tumbled down her back in a sculpture-like way, as long and black and silky as it had always been.

Never had she better deserved the codename that had long ago been given to her by a woman of masks and disguises: an angel, an angel of beautiful gravity shunted down on earth in an unexpected moment of grace, mislead and wondering, and, despite the black clothes and the sombre look, yet not quite fallen – not quite fallen.

"Kudo-san has arrived, miss," said the butler in a booming voice, startling them both. In a rapid succession of moves, Ran started, turned her eyes to them, opened her mouth, and finally thanked him. "Not at all, miss," and the door closed upon him, leaving them alone with the sunlight.

A beat.

Then the moment passed and she was advancing towards him with an outstretched hand, a polite smile, and on her lips a cordial, "Kudo-san? I'm glad you could come. Your presence was very much desired – by all of the guests. Do sit down."

Shinichi did sit down, turned down a cigarette – he had never smoked, neither had she, and she knew it very well – and demanded more precisions about the case before he did anything with it – refuse it or accept it. She then launched in a long, detailed narration, which he attentively listened to, while leafing through the dossier she had given him. It was evidently a lawyer's work: she had carefully labelled each and every one of the anonymous letters after the date and location it had been found at, and very minutely noted down every little event, however insignificant t first sight, that she had happened to witness. With this he should be able to work on this case as though he'd been there from the beginning.

She talked for the best part of a half-hour, and after a while he neglected the notebook and contented himself with listening to her. There were but little questions to ask – she gave the answers spontaneously, before he'd time to demand them. Each time she spoke with a smartness and acumen which honoured her work; he could hardly have done better himself. But even of that he tended to grow weary – the best surprise here was the mellow curves of her voice, the resurgence of memories, and the fact maybe that at twenty-eight she was even more beautiful, if possible, than she had been at eighteen.

Only once she stopped. She'd been frowning in disgust at one of the letters in the folder, which had evidently been addressed to her and represented a naked woman threatened by a sort of blind weapon overhead, and when surprised at her sudden silence he looked up, her cheeks showed a flush of embarrassment. His eyes met hers, and she looked startled, then hastily resumed her speech in a shaky voice that soon got firmer.

When she had finished, Shinichi sat a considerable time in silence, considering the problem at hand. The whole scheme looked like it was taken straight out of a mystery book – and, very probably, it was. The culprit had evidently fished his moves out of different detective novels here and there. The real feat was the success at combining those random pieces into an actual plot… but this kind of anonymous-letters-scheme had a snag, and an obvious one: the dropping of the cards was too irregular and too hazardous never to be surprised into doing something unexpected…

He'd kept silent for too long a time, and Ran – sorry, Mouri-san was wanting her answer. A hesitation here. His decision was taken, but the formality of the letter sufficiently showed that had the choice been on her side, the request would have been addressed to somebody else.

"It's a pretty problem," he acknowledged.

"Very pretty," she said acidly. "Yet my clients wish most of all to avoid scandal. We _cannot_ let this continue much longer – there must be a solution, and we've got to find it quickly."

Vaguely noting, in some part of her mind, that 'they' had tended to become 'we' alongside her narration, Shinichi lowered his voice for no good reason – they were alone in the library, bar the sunlight – to say, "Listen. If you – don't want me here, I can call someone else to do the job. People like Hattori, or Hakuba – they would tackle this as well as I would."

He straightened on his chair and waited for her reaction. She was biting the inside of her lower lip, in an attitude that suddenly was no longer practical and professional – in flickers, Mouri-san was disappearing, and Ran – the eighteen years old Ran, only grown and knowing better – was showing up at intervals. She recovered her dossier to do something, fidgeted a second with a lock of black hair falling on her shoulder, then looked back up with a determined look and said, "I wouldn't trust them with this half as I would trust you, Shinichi-san."

It was like a breath of pure air combined with a cold shower. He remembered smiling, relaxing, feeling better in his body and in his mind – then the first thing he very distinctly recalled afterwards was asking after the exact number of guests and their names. From that moment on, everything was very business-like and easily led.

"Well – there's Asama-san, of course," Ran said thoughtfully. "It was he who first mentioned your name when we were all wondering who to call. He said he had met you, by the way, but didn't precise when nor where."

"Ah, yes," Shinichi had got out a notebook and was rapidly writing. "We met over a case I solved once. It was rather ironical – I accused the man he defended, and I suppose the culprit would have got away with ten more years' incarceration if anyone else had done the job. We talked after the trial – he is a sensible, very intelligent man."

"Very," said Ran, eagerly. "He is the reason I decided myself to become a lawyer – his impassivity and determination at court have impressed on me. I watched a broadcasting at fifteen—"

"I remember," Shinichi began and then cut short, and asked, who else.

"Sakagushi Shizue-san – I think you know her, as well." He nodded without looking up and went on writing unperturbed. "And someone else who said she had met you – I don't know if you remember her – Ikenami Inoue-san…"

"Ikenami-san?" He looked up, frowning. "Is she there, as well?"

"Yes," Ran confirmed, with a puzzled look. "Do you happen… I mean… do you know her well?"

"Well isn't the word," Shinichi said, still frowning. "We have met twice only – but I am not likely to forget them. She was called to examine a dead man who'd been found in his flat three days after the death – I had been called there, too – and the autopsy went completely wrong. She and the other doctor inspecting the body didn't agree at all on the results. It was very singular—"

"Wait," Ran said. "Do you mean to say Ikenami-san is a forensic expert?"

"Yes…" he laid his notebook on his lap. "Didn't you know?"

"No, I didn't. She never told me. Then again, she doesn't speak much."

He laughed. "No. Well, I wouldn't remember this matter so well if it hadn't occurred a second time, all over again. Another body, another practitioner with her, another autopsy – and yet the same scheme occurred. The results were completely different – and neither of them could give an explanation for this. It didn't help with the solving of the case, either, since the whole matter depended on when the man was killed." He finished writing determinedly and looked up at her. "Who else?"

Ran rapidly described Akira-san and Kenjin-san, then came more delicately to the matter of Ebihara-san. "What he's doing here, I can't imagine," she said thoughtfully. "The only think I can think of is that their study – whatever _that_ is – needs a substantial financial background – and he has been called here for that purpose. But the whole matter is impossible to make out," she added vehemently, "They all seem to have gathered here under circumstances entirely coincidental – they never _talk_ of anything concerning a work of any kind – their study is making no sense at all. If there _is_ a study, that is."

"Have you ever witnessed something that makes you think there _isn't_ one?"

"All the time. Everyday."

"Then there probably is one." He smiled and snapped his notebook shut. "Very well," he said, standing up. "I shall have to go back to Tokyo to fetch my things and cancel my cases for the upcoming weeks. I suppose I can lodge here – I will have a greater strength of action than if reside in some inn in the nearest village."

"Yes – certainly," said Ran, taken aback. "There are dozens of deserted rooms in this mansion – I can get Briggs to prepare one for you by this evening. Had you rather be on the first floor or—"

"The second floor would be perfect – I'll be able to move more freely. Well—" he extended a hand, which she shook, "thank you, for this information. I shall be back by dinnertime." She'd walked him over to the door and he opened it and faced her again. "Have a good day."

"Thank you. 'Till this evening."

She watched him walk down the corridor. He hadn't passed past a few doors that one of them opened, and a grave voice called after him, "Kudo-kun!"

"Ah – Asama-san," the younger man said, turning back. "I'm glad to see you. I wanted to tell you about—" They walked down together towards the hall, their voices gradually dropping to a whisper, then as they turned past a corner, into silence. Ran went back into the library and closed the door slowly.

She leant against the wooden panel, arms folded, and stared at the golden flickers of dust in the sunlight that fell luminously in through the windows, wondering which of them had made the greatest mistake – him in accepting the case, or herself in turning down his proposition to bow back out of the matter.

-

Shinichi's first evening among the household went off without a hitch. If the guests' defiance towards him was palpable, they nonetheless tried their best to act as genuinely as possible and put at ease; yet among them, only Asama-san and Sakagushi-san were perfectly tranquil with him and did not show any sign of exterior anxiety.

Or interior, thought Ran, who by now had come to know them well enough to be able to sight-read their body language. Their palms were open, their shoulders relaxed, their features calm, their voices clear and sound. Either they had mastered the art of Poker Face to an unmovable degree (they probably had for all she knew) or they actually felt no distrust in his presence. Which, if either of them was the Poltergeist, was rather a problem…

What about him? Did he feel anything, apart from intellectual excitement? Was this – only a case among others, a mere event in his detective career? What was he thinking, as he spoke in a low voice to Asama-san, or when he sat with his cup of coffee, like he did now, and observed the room with half-lidded eyes, almost as if he slept – blue gaze flickering from one to the other in an irregular and seemingly incoherent succession.

He had played the billiard with Akira-san, talked Kenjin-san into a half-hour long conversation, opposed an amused air to Ebihara-san's dark glares, and made Ikenami-san look up from her book by saluting her amiably – and never once the reason for his presence here was mentioned by either of them. Passing between groups, Ran tried to concentrate herself on the matter at hand, but in vain – her eyes always strayed away on him, on the person whom with he talked, on his chess moves from one to the other in the sitting-room.

By mid-evening, he was deep in conversation with Sakagushi-san and herself was seated not very far with Hikaru-san, when Araide sauntered over to him closer to him, giving Ran a sharp jolt in the plexus. The introduction was made, a hand was stretched in earnest on Araide's side, and Shinichi, after a second's hesitation, shook it.

"I've heard a lot about you," Araide said genially, "we all did here. It is a great honour knowing you. Do you know," he added more thoughtfully, "you actually look a lot like someone I knew – a boy – only he mustn't be boy by now. What say you, Ran-chan?" he called out to her, and though she had seen that coming all this while she could not help being startled. "Don't you think Kudo-kun here looks strikingly like little Conan-kun did?"

The phantom of a little boy with thick glasses rose in the middle of the room, then faltered. "Very much alike," Ran said shortly, and looked away.

"He must be something like eighteen now – went back to America with his parents ten years ago," Araide was informing Shinichi. "A very smart, clever boy – I remember he wanted to be a detective, just like—" Ran didn't wait for the end of the sentence. She walked abruptly to the nearest window and stood there in silence, arms folded, staring straight into the night outside. The dark pane reflected lights form the village, lodged narrowly between the black shapes of the mountains. She closed her eyes.

Shinichi joined her after a few minutes, having succeeded in disentangling himself from Araide's cordial grip. "I'm sorry," he murmured, sitting on the windowseat and leaning forward on his elbows. "I – should have foreseen that kind of thing coming."

Ran kept silent for a second. "Have you found anything?" she asked then, feeling that 'Conan-kun' were dangerous grounds to tread. Shinichi looked sharply at her and then away. "I'm not certain," he said slowly. "I do have suspicions. By the way, I wish you could show me the quad where you found those footsteps after the wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office, Ran-san."

Evidently he had studied the dossier in depth before dinner – he had found the weak flank of that incident immediately. "You know they'll all be gone," Ran said sternly. "It has rained ever since, and it's been more than a week."

"I know," he said. "I just want to see the location. Would you show me in the morning?"

Ran assented to that, and they remained some time longer in silence. This was growing to be more awkward then they had suspected at first. Then Shinichi was called away and Ran stayed alone in front of the dark pane, thinking, "Stupid. Stupid. Stupid."

Later that night, when she walked back to her room, it was to find a white card on her floor as she opened the door. Sighing, she picked it up. It ran, _We are ten now. We can begin at last._ Underneath it spread mockingly verses of a cheap riddle, which made her shudder in disgust,

_Ten little Soldier boys went out to dine;_

_One choked his little self and then there were Nine._

_Nine little Soldier boys sat up very late…_

-

'**And Then There Were None' was a important basis for this story, as you'll have noticed. So it was only fair to quote this awesome book. I've also quoted elements from other mystery stories along the way through the story – those who can find them get extra cookies – flavour whichever you want. ;)**

**Oh, speaking of which –passes plates of chocolate chip cookies- thx for reading, minna!**


	7. Fighting To Fall

Author's note:

**Author's note****: Quick update this time – to apologize for last chapter's lateness. Besides, I'm leaving tomorrow night on vacation, so… This chapter concerns both Shinichi and Ran's relationship **_**and**_** the actual plot of the story, so I recommend reading it through. Some explanations in here are essential for the rest of the solution. :)**

**Disclaimer: Nooooooo. I don't own anything, and much less make any money out of it.**

**-**

'_So you think _I'm_ the murderer? What do I have to do to convince you that I'm not, be the next victim?' _

'_Well, that would be a start.'_

Peter Stone (_Charade, _1963)

-

At ten o'clock the next morning, they were standing together in the quad, and Shinichi was crouching in the wet grass – it had rained again that night, and the sky was grey and overcast – under the windows of Makoto-kun's office. Standing behind him, Ran watched as he parted the plants carefully and inspected the ground. His back was tense, denoting his concentration; she looked at it then rolled back up to the shoulders, underlined by the lines of the well-cut jacket. The nape, bent and shadowed by locks of black hair. The hair itself, dark and silky—

"Are you certain you found them there?"

"Positive," said Ran. "I told you you wouldn't find anything." The jawline, the neck falling towards the collarbone. The shell of the ear.

"I wasn't looking for traces of anything," he said. "When did you say you had found them? In the morning after the incident?"

"Yes…" A glimpse of the profile, as he turned for a fraction of second to glance at a bed of orchids. The rapid move of the arm, the hand brushing against the leaves of a shrub, the elbow retreating to the knee. Then he straightened up and got to his feet, brushing his clothes and interrupting without knowing it her contemplation.

"After you had asked Briggs to lock all the doors and windows giving onto the quad?"

"Yes."

"After it had rained all night?"

"_Yes._"

He looked at her, sharp blue eyes piercing a hole in her chest, all the way past her heart and straight into her soul. Her breath caught and she released it slowly, wishing her heart would stop skipping beats. _Why_ was he affecting her that way? It had been ten years, hadn't it?

"Tell me you haven't fallen for that," he said in a half-amused voice.

"I _haven't_!" she protested in a surge of perfectly genuine irritation. "Of course the footsteps I found were made _after_ the incident!" She realised she sounded just like an unnerved schoolgirl, coughed, and resumed in a more professional manner, "if they had been made _before_ the culprit wrecked Makoto-kun's office, on his way inside the room, like he evidently wants us to believe, the rain would have washed them out since it only came afterwards. As it is, our man, or woman, made up the evidence of his having gone through the window, in a way to divert us from the door. We were supposed – or, at least, I was supposed to make the association rain plus wet ground plus footsteps without a second thought."

"_Very_ good, Sherlock," Shinichi said. He had a small, fleeting smile, and Ran suddenly knew what had changed: the embarrassment of resurging memories, such as there was between them the day before, had disappeared, and his restraint in his relationship with her had moved into a straightforward attitude. If that was what he wanted and she followed, it would inevitably bring conflict and discord between them…

"I suppose he had gone in with a picklock the first time over, and then the same the second time, when he came to make the prints," he added gravely, "since Briggs and co had closed all doors and windows giving onto the quad, so there was no other way in."

So we'll fight this until we fall. Very well. "There had to be something fishy about his ability to enter the room, then," she said, and he looked sharply at her, then smiled. "The lock is rather a complicated one, and only Briggs had the key to it. I asked him. Not one of his bunch has ever disappeared."

"The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime," Shinichi murmured. "You're right – there must be a reason behind all this drama. I don't suppose he or she should have gone to such an extreme scheme if there hadn't been something important he wanted most to conceal. It is nonetheless extremely clever of him – or her – to use both the weather and the necessary deductions that follow on the detective's side as a way to hide – whatever was to be hidden. Of course, if it had rained earlier in the evening, the times would be so watertight there would have been no way at all to deduce the footprints were false – anyway, it's all extremely well-thought."

"If you would kindly stop admiring the intellectual capacities of the lunatic we're trying to catch," Ran said irritatingly, and at that moment it began to rain abruptly. Heavy drops crushed against the walls and the stones in the quad, rapidly darkening them; by the time they had retreated safe and dry inside the building, it was pouring more and more rapidly and rattling against the glass of the double-window Shinichi was closing behind them.

"By the way, I forgot to note this in my report," Ran began as they directed themselves in the general direction of the library, and told him about Akira-san's phone call she had surprised that same morning she had discovered the suspects. Shinichi listened in silence and considered carefully while she told him her deductions and suspicions on that matter. "Of course, in that case, it would exculpate Akira-san from being our culprit," she added. "I don't think he has the brains anyhow."

"Oh, he does," Shinichi said lightly. "I think Kano-kun is much more intelligent than he lets pretend. Take billiard. Yesterday evening he played two parties out of Kenjin-san and me in a few minutes. He juggles with the whole complex system of bounces and redundancies as if it were child's play. In fact," he added, more thoughtfully, "I should think he is one of the most likely to be the Poltergeist – along with Taichi-san and Sakagushi-san."

"And which of _them_ do you think is the more likely to be our culprit?"

"Sakagushi-san," he said without a hesitation. "Taichi-san's character and judgement appear to me to be much too just and straightforward – then again, it might just be pretence. But Sakagushi-san corresponds better. Doesn't mean she _is_ the poison pen though."

Ran looked down. "I like her, you know."

"So do I. Besides, if she _is_ our culprit, she's all the more likely to lay traps behind her and never leave absolute evidence of _her_ having committed a crime. We might never pin her down to anything. I'd rather have it be somebody else. By the way, I think you mentioned your decision with Dr Araide of taking turns in the building at night – did you?"

"Only the first nights," Ran confessed sheepishly. "After the aggression on Sakagushi-san, we kinda dropped it. Being only two, we couldn't do much anyway."

"Well, now we're three," Shinichi said. "And we can add up Briggs. That makes four. We should be able to do some good work that way. We'll begin tonight, if you don't mind."

Ran said she didn't mind, and sighed. What with nightmares, Shinichi's presence in the daytime, insomnia, aggressions and now those night turns in the passageways, it seemed that somebody somewhere had decided to deprive her of sleepful nights lately.

-

Walking all alone in a mansion at night, with hardly a lamp torch as faithful companion and protection through heaven and hell, is always creepy. And the fright makes it even bigger if you're actually looking for a deranged lunatic creeping in the darkness, with a mental constitution and no hesitation at all at shooting you straight out. Ran ruminated this as she walked down the corridors, the light ray of her torch swaying from wall to wall and reflecting in the dark windowpanes.

Of course it was the only means they could come up with to put obstacles in the Poison Pen's way, and probably one of the most effective. It was next to impossible that none of them, during their respective watches, should not come across the Poltergeist one time or another – but whom of the two should have to repent that meeting was difficult to say. There could be a gun pointing at you every corner you turned, and seeing the face of your aggressor would be of no use at all if you died.

Well, Shinichi _would _have to be sorry, she thought fiercely.

A turn. Another turn. Doors on her left and right, and pieces of furniture – a long bookcase lining the wall, an enormous wardrobe in a corner, a smooth, crimson-dark curtain flying in the way. A row of windows, and in the trailing light of her torch she saw her face like a vampire's pale and hollow. She passed on.

The silence was complete and oppressive. Not a sound; not even the rapid noise of a mouse scurrying in a hole of the wall. Not a footstep either. And yet she knew that somewhere in the house two people at least were awake: Shinichi, preparing to take the round after her, and the Poison Pen, typing out new notes to be found tomorrow. It didn't make her feel any better.

She walked on, sweeping the ray of her torch on her surroundings, and the ottomans, cabinets, firescreens, shelves, writing desks, aspidistras, etc., seemed to move in front of her irritatingly and ask why she was waking them up. She disentangled herself from a jumble of chairs around a rosewood table and hesitated between turning right or left when a sound arouse her attention onto a closed door farther ahead.

It sounded like a creaking, only softer and mellower. Standing in front of the door with one hand on the knob, Ran marked a pause. This felt very much like a booby-trap and she was about to walk into it head-first, but, damn it! one was a black-belt karateka or one wasn't. She thought of Shinichi. It would serve him right if she died.

She opened the door, and an extremely swift thing with black fur and shining greenish eyes shot straight out of the darkness and leaped into her arms. She staggered backwards in the corridor, trying simultaneously not to fall off in surprise, not to drop her torch, and to keep her heart from beating erratically, and found herself carrying an extremely terrified cat whose claws were digging in her shoulder.

A cat. She sighed, feeling very foolish with herself. It was just a cat, probably Emily's or Cook's – nothing to be afraid of. It was shivering in her arms, a very nervous animal. Just _what_ was it doing in this room…

She peered inside, stroking it behind its ears, but nothing conspicuous or threatening came out of the darkness. The car – now beginning to calm down – had probably come in through the door or the window, and a maid or the wind had slammed it shut. She closed the door slowly, still petting the cat – it seemed to feel better now that it was in safety: it had cradled in her arms and was purring gently.

"Yeah, right – you can purr now," Ran told it. Its right ear twitched. "Only you were scared to death only a moment ago, and you nearly scared _me_ to dearth, too." Her voice was crackling but it got better. The cat meowed, and that was the sound she'd heard, only it was mellower and less terrified. She recovered her torch, and the cat climbed higher on her arms finally to drape itself over her shoulders, its tail curling itself around her neck. It was still purring, rubbing its small head against her hair. "C'mon, let's go," she said to it. "We've got a poltergeist to catch."

"Ran-chan?"

"What!" She jumped a good feet high. The blond hair and white blouse of Araide's came into shape in the torch's light, bringing sudden relief after sudden fear; but his usually smiling face was worried and there was a glimpse of madness in the eyes. He was squinting to see her, blinded by the ray of light.

"Thank God I've found you," his voice was shaking, "I've been searching – come with me. There's been an – ah – incident."

"What's happened?" she said, starting after him.

"Come on." He turned back in the opposite direction, so fast she had to run to keep up.

He led her straight to his rooms, where were gathered Hikaru-san, sitting on a chair and shivering, and Sakagushi-san, holding a glass of water for her. Shinichi was standing at the window, looking out into the night; when Ran came in he turned to her with a grave look. Araide himself slumped in an armchair by his wife's and rubbed his face tiredly.

"What's going on?" panted Ran, and the cat disentangled itself from her shoulders, jumped soundlessly to the floor, and trotted up to Sakagushi-san. It curled around her leg, meowing. Ran looked at it for a second, catching her breath, and repeated her unanswered question.

"Well," the older lawyer said, glancing at Hikaru, who was clutching her husband's arm for comfort, but Shinichi interrupted her.

"I think I'd better tell her." Sakagushi-san nodded, and he turned back to Ran. "It seems that Hikaru-san has been aggressed in a corridor," he said bluntly. Hikaru gasped, and Araide gripped her hand so hard his knuckles whitened. Ran dropped herself in a chair and said, "_What?"_

"From what we've managed to understand from her," Shinichi went on, more coherently, "she had forgotten a book in the drawing room and was returning here when _somebody_ grabbed her neck from behind and – obviously attempted to strangle her. There was no light on, and she couldn't see anything. But the culprit – whoever it was – had an iron grip around her neck and told about her baby, how she wouldn't want it to die with her, and – things," he cut short, seeing that Hikaru's eyes were filling with tears.

Ran felt sick suddenly. She knew the man was deranged, but this—"Did you see at least whether it was a man or a woman?" she asked slowly to fight nausea.

"N-no," Hikaru stammered, and wiping away tears, regained some composure. "He was talking in a low voice, so it c-could have b-been anyone." (Ran nonetheless noticed that she had said 'he' rather than 'she': her subconscious had assimilated her aggressor as a man. In which case – it proved absolutely nothing.)

"And what happened then?"

Araide took up, while his wife drained down Sakagushi-san's glass of water. "Hikaru said the – person let her go suddenly, and disappeared in the shadows. She ran back here. At first she was too confused to tell us anything but afterwards – I thought I'd come after you."

Not the best thing to do, Ran thought grimly. If she had gone on her round she might have surprised the poltergeist. Shinichi's eyes met hers for a second, and she knew he was thinking the same. She wondered why he hadn't stopped Araide from going to fetch her.

"I wish I could do something to help," Sakagushi-san said gravely, sitting as well and petting the cat, which had stretched lazily on her lap.

"I don't think you can," Shinichi said, with a sombre look. He walked up to the Araide couple. "Hikaru-san, I'm sorry to rub it in, but if you can remember anything about your aggressor – anything that might help us identify him – I wish you would tell us. It could help us very much, since you're the only one who's had a physical contact with the – the culprit." He didn't look as though he expected much of an answer.

He didn't get one. Hikaru apologized, but the shock and fright and confusion had been too great and she hadn't been able to discern anything. Shinichi smiled, said it was quite all right, and laid his hand on Araide's shoulder for a second before he walked back up to the window.

The ever-ready Briggs came in then, with brandy, china cups, and a silver pot of what turned out to be cacao. Ran drained down half a cup of it before Shinichi took her aside and asked her to 'bring Sakagushi-san back to her rooms.' "I should like to learn more from Hikaru-san," he added in a whisper, "but she is too shocked for the moment to answer my questions. Sakagushi-san was sitting with me and Araide when his wife came in, which is why she stayed with us, but now she would only get to interfere."

Accordingly, the two women paid their goodnights, gave Hikaru a few more words of comfort, and exited the room into the corridor. As they walked together towards the great staircase, the cat trotted ahead of them with a dignified attitude and its black tail in the air, leading the way.

"Is it yours?" Ran asked.

"No. It must be the household cat. He knows where to find me, though – in the evening he comes to visit me in my rooms because he knows I've got milk. Where did you find him?"

"Locked up in a guestroom while I was doing my round."

"Aha. Any luck?"

Ran looked at her. "None. And yet I was turning in the surroundings," she deplored. "If Dr Araide hadn't come to find me, I might have run across our poltergeist and those dirty tricks would have been done and over with. Hikaru-san a pregnant woman, too," she added disgustedly. "I wonder Shinichi-san didn't prevent Araide-san from coming after me."

"He must have been worried for you," Sakagushi-san said in her cool voice.

She hadn't thought of that. "Yes. Well. Maybe. At least tonight exculpates _you_ from being our culprit, since you were sitting with Shinichi and Araide when Hikaru was aggressed. And it narrows the spectre of likely suspects." That was the only good thing she could see in all this mess.

"Unless I have an accomplice," Sakagushi-san reminded her. Farther ahead, the cat stopped at a corner and looked back at them, its grey-green pupils shining in the dark. It waited till they had joined it before it started up again. "We could be two doing the job – or several. For all you know, we could very well all be involved."

"Oh, damn," said Ran, irritatingly. "This case is starting to get on my nerves."

-

To those who expected fluff – Shinichi and Ran's relationship isn't going to be easy in this. The chapter's title says it all. Who said I'm sadistic? Nah… I just like to torture them a leeeeetle bit…

**A lot of cookie-shaped thanks (n-n) to the people who reviewed so far – you really are awesome, and this story goes on the right way thanks to you. –bows– –gives the cookies–**


	8. Moment Of Calm

Author's note:

**Author's note: This chapter was essentially written for the sake of Ran and Shinichi's relationship. They're quite stubborn, those two, and I can't guarantee, either, that things are gonna be easy… Action's next chapter. This one's also the beginning of this story's second half.**

**Disclaimer: Fjldsasjkfdlsa. I do NOT own anything. I just take those two characters, put them in awkward situations, and see how it turns out. I'm not making any money out of THAT. Oh, no…**

**-**

Chapter 8 – Moment Of Calm

**-**

And then, at night, the lit lamp and the drawn curtain, with the flutter of the turned pages and soft scrape of pen on paper the only sounds to break the utter silence between quarter and quarter chime.

Dorothy Sayers (_Gaudy Night)_

-

Hikaru-san's aggression was meant to remain in the most complete secrecy. Apart from the Araides, Shinichi and Ran herself, only Briggs and Sakagushi-san knew about it, and their discretion could be relied upon. Nonetheless, it so happened that the following evening, while Ran was working in the library after dinner, Akira-san burst in as usual and asked after 'that row about Hikaru-san's incident yesterday night.'

Ran put her pen brusquely down. "Who told you about _that?"_

"Everybody knows," he said, surprised. "It was dinner's main topic at our end of the table. Didn't you listen? What _is_ it all about? Nobody seemed to know for sure. Do you?"

"I know all about it," Ran murmured, cursing herself mentally for not paying attention to the animated conversation that had taken place at the other end of the table. But Shinichi had been talking in front of her, and she'd been much too absorbed by the case he was describing to—"_Who_ told you about it?" she persisted.

"Ken-kun did," Akira said, looking more puzzled. "Ikenami-san had told something to him about it, and he wanted to know whether _I _actually knew anything more. _I _didn't. What is all the bloody racket all about anyway?"

She really needed to stop personal feelings from interfering with this business. "It's – complicated. I'm afraid I can't tell much more about it than you already know – and I _wish_," she added hastily, seeing that he prepared to speak again, "you wouldn't disturb Hikaru-san with it, either. She's been sufficiently shocked as it is. In fact, if you could try and shut the matter up – switch topics when it's brought forwards, that kind of thing – it would be very helpful."

He assented, now thorough confused. "Of course I will, if you want me to – I say, is this our friend the poltergeist playing his tricks again?" Ran nodded, and he looked positively thrilled. Presently he recovered himself. "I'll do my best – when I can."

Ran was about to say 'Good boy' and pat his arm, but she remembered billiard's rebounds and redundancies and contented herself with thanking him properly. He opened his mouth, on a good way to get to talking again, but the door opened then, and Shinichi came in.

He glanced rapidly at them both. Somehow his eyes seemed to be a darker blue, but that may be only the room's darkness. "Kano-kun, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I should like to talk with Ran-san. In _private_," he emphasised.

Akira had twitched at the 'Kano-kun' but he complied without so much as a protest. "Oh! yes, certainly," he said, "I'll leave you two alone. Yes, of course. Well, I'll buzz off then. Er – goodnight." At the door he paused. "Cheerio!" he said amiably, and went out.

Shinichi dropped himself in an armchair by the hearth, picked up the poker, and straightened a log that threatened to fall off. "Well!" he said. "It seems that our man – or woman – whichever – doesn't like incognito."

"Of course he doesn't," Ran said. "His whole threat-letters business wouldn't mean anything if he remained in the shadows. He's got to show off, of else his carefully thought-out plan all goes west." She seated herself opposite him. "Well, it's not for the worst," she said wearily. "They were bound to learn about it sometime or other. How bad can it possibly be anyway?"

"Bad, rather," Shinichi said, looking worried. "Now that they know about the possible violence of the culprit, they may do foolish things in case they're attacked. And get themselves killed, rather sooner than they were meant to be. Had they not known anything, they would have been better protected."

Ran was really tired. To her discharge, this had been a long day, full of more triumphing letters found and decisions to be taken, and she was exhausted; besides, she really couldn't help herself anymore. Not after days of closing Shinichi's presence around her, and feeling like a helpless doll. "Ah, yes – protection's your greatest motto, isn't it?"

"_Shit!"_

He stared angrily into the fire. "I knew you would come up with this sometime or other. You wouldn't leave it all buried in the past, would you? No, of course not – it was stupid of me to think so."

"It's a difficult thing to forget," snarled Ran, who was now too well launched to come back to more solid grounds. She was suddenly taken with an immense hatred for the man sitting in front of her. She went on, regardless of the consequences of such a speech, "being lied to for an entire year by the one person I thought I could most trust. Whom I thought trusted me, too."

"You know perfectly why I did all this," he said, still staring determinedly into the flames. "And it's been ten years. It's _past_, Ran. Can't we leave it all there? Or do we have to roam over the same old quarrel, all over _again?"_ He poked savagely into the fire.

"It's not something I can forget so easily," Ran said coolly. "And I'm not going to pretend it never happened, because it _did_." He looked at her, dark blue, and she was immediately breathless. Silence ensued.

"I see," he said finally, after what felt like an eternity of fires flaring high in the hearth. "What you really mean is, you don't want me here at all, not even to solve this case. I'm only bringing back ugly memories – a nuisance, in your perfectly thought-out life. My simple presence here revolts you, doesn't it?" He stopped, at the worst moment. There was absolutely nothing to be said, at this point, that wouldn't put matters worse. "But in that case, why call for me at all?"

"I didn't exactly have the _choice_," Ran said, leaning forward like an angry animal. "They needed somebody they could all trust, they specifically requested you, and I spent one hell of a time writing that bloody letter – I didn't get a chance to say anything against the whole plot of calling you up. My opinion wasn't even asked for." She was breathless when she finished, and felt very much as though she was about to cry. Tears stung at her eyes, but nothing more, no repressed sob chocking in her throat, no silvery pearl curving down her cheek, that might have saved the situation for them.

Silence, again. This time it was worst than the first. It heaved around them, filling the room with mist and keeping them from moving, separating them from the rest of the house as though the library was one single, particular entity, roaming forward into the night.

"Look," Shinichi said, eventually, and the tension instead of breaking down built up a little tighter. "We can't go on like this. If we do we won't be able to bear each other's presence, and we need to _work_ _together_, not rip each other to shreds. Can't we call a truce for the time being – until we solve this case. We'll find the culprit, we'll catch him and be done with it – then I'll take you out to coffee and… back away from your life. For good." He paused. "What do you think?"

Ran nodded slowly. "It suits me. I – Shinichi – I'm tired." She relaxed in her armchair and rubbed her eyes. "I'm so tired."

"So am I."

The fire crackled. Outside, raindrops began to rattle on the windowpanes. It was October 31st, and one of the year's last sunny days, slowly dissolving into the rainy skies of Autumn. And, with November slowly crawling in with the twelve strokes of midnight, things began to shift, imperceptibly.

-

A routine of a sort settled in back again. Both Ran and Shinichi were careful not to cross the boundaries they had themselves traced between them, keeping, therefore, on the solid grounds of formal politeness and methodical thinking. Curiously, the other guests seemed to adopt the same policy of discretion: it appeared that Hikaru-san's accident had finally awakened them to the danger and gravity of the situation, and their defiance toward one another was growing stronger. Even Kenjin-san and Akira-san, who usually were the life and soul of their elongated evenings, now kept their distances; and only Ebihara-san, gravely serious and sombre-looking, remained unchanged.

Quarrels sprung out of nowhere, unforeseen, and no-one would dare walking alone in the corridors, especially at night – however, since the trust between the guests was rapidly thinning out, staying in one's room became more and more frequent. Tension was palpable between _them_, and their defiance toward Ran and Shinichi made it almost impossible to get any substantial information from any of the lot.

Surprisingly, no extraordinary event came to life within the whole following week, more than a nasty bunch of letters and the discovery of equally nasty messages left in red paint on the walls. Ran had thought that their culprit would have wanted to strike them fast and hard, in an unforgettable manner; but by the end of the week, she rather believed he delightedly enjoyed the climax of tension and fear that settled on the mansion, and let it build up among them only to see how soon and how easily it would implode.

Outside, however, regardless of man's twisted schemes and tricks, nature tranquilly went on its way through November towards the first frosts of winter. The last leaves were falling, light-brown and dark-brown, and a strong, chilly wind swept them aside onto the forest's lawns. In the daytime, the sky was clouded and grey, rapidly darkening towards black as the afternoon shortened into an early evening.

When night fell, it was to drown that sky and its surroundings in an ocean of blue and black. Darkness tumbled down like a mist, and with it the cold air saturating the window; sometimes, Ran wiped it away absently, and in the few seconds before it fogged over again, she saw that one, or several more lights had been turned off on the west wing's façade, which her window was looking onto. She had time to wonder whether the occupant of one of these other bedrooms, instead of going quietly to sleep, had not gone off haunting the inner corridors to slide lunatic letters under people's doors, and could not repress a shudder of alarm.

Black clouds amassed in the dark-blue sky, forecasting rain for the next day and tension between the mansion's inhabitants at having to remain cloistered among themselves – unless the wind that ran against the building, whistling gloomily, was strong enough to shake the clouds away like thin black ribbons of smoke. Farther off from the house's grounds, the surrounding forest marked the limits on the known territories with shadows; a thin, vague, faint trickle of moonlight slid in through the mist like a silver thread stretching out; and then the glass blurred over with cold, and everything outside was grey again.

Within, the warm glow of the light on the pages of her latest case's record; the lamp was an old nineteenth-century gas one, and not at all unusual in the Suzuki household. It cast a golden gleam on the desk's red wood, like the trail swept by a firework stick, that immediately extinguishes in the darkness.

The silence was oppressive – the scrape of a pen occasionally taking notes repeated itself as the only sound to break through it. Sometimes, she fancied she heard footsteps in the background, in some far-away passage; and she looked up from her report and listened carefully – but the sounds (if there ever were any) did not reproduce, and everything lapsed again into silence.

From time to time, she would interrupt her work and lean her cheek on her palm, thinking, her mind wandering off in some la-la land of a sort. In such reverie, her object was ghostly figures tiptoeing down a corner and plotting tricks, as well as the memory of an involuntary kiss interrupted ten years in the past. Sometimes the two would melt together in the present time, or else in the anticipation of tomorrow morning, when, maybe, probably, there would be another letter to be found and Shinichi would be studying it, carefully…

What she didn't know was that, at the very moment, Shinichi was sitting with Sakagushi-san by the hearth in the library, just like she had sat with him last time; the seats only were reversed. She might have recognised the symptoms on Shinichi's face as he talked with the lawyer; just like herself when she spoke with her colleague, he felt like his brains were turned inside out.

"I quite see what you mean," he said when she had finished; she had just explained to him her own theory about the incidents and the poltergeist. "But you see the catch. It's as large as the Titanic." He pulled up a log from the grand basket beside the chimney and arranged it in the hearth. The fire sizzled and crackled.

"Yes," Sakagushi-san said thoughtfully. "It's impossible to miss, of course."

"It's the incident of the dog in the nighttime," Shinichi said, relaxing in the depths of the armchair with a smirk. Sherlock Holmes was solid grounds enough. "And I don't see any way around it. Besides," he added, "your whole theory – though possible – is counteract as soon as you are considered a suspect yourself."

"I could very well have used this device, as well," the lawyer remarked.

"And you would have told me so that I'd think you would never expose your plans to me? Yes, of course. Anyway," Shinichi went on carefully, "I don't think we'll be able to get out of this without public revelation. There's been at least one murder attempt in this case, and if somebody really is killed – and I should tend to think that's our culprit's final aim – scandal with be unavoidable. Even if we try to cover it up, it will only call more attention onto the matter. I'm afraid your study will suffer then," he added with a smile that only half apologized.

"Maybe. But nothing compared to what _you_ can hurt."

The fire cast a reddish glow on Sakagushi-san's chiselled features, like a statue of marble.

"Have we been found out in that matter, too? I should have known."

"It's as large as the Titanic," the lawyer dropped casually. "You are playing the role well enough to fool everyone else. Except perhaps Kano-kun." The name rolled out with amusement. "And you've slithered out of my question." She wasn't going to leave him any escape.

"I don't know," he said sincerely. "And I don't suppose I'll know until it's all over. We were childhood friends, you know."

"Hmm." Eyes half-closed in the shadows of the library, Sakagushi-san looked almost exactly like the cat on her lap, whose black fur was rippling with each stroke. Shinichi could almost imagine he heard her purr.

-

Later that night, after he'd wished Sakagushi-san goodnight and was walking up to his room, he was stricken by a fancy to go see Ran and tell her of her colleague's theory. It wouldn't be so much of a detour – their bedrooms were on the same floor, on corridors symmetrically opposed not far from the grand staircase. Only halfway through he paused, thinking maybe she had gone to sleep already – it was way past midnight; but as he approached he saw the thin slit of light under the door.

He rapped on it softly. "Ran? It's me. Can I come in? I've heard of new developments to tell you about…" No answer – maybe she was so absorbed by her work she hadn't heard him. He knocked, a little louder. "_Ran?"_

Silence again. His throat stuck. Blindly, his hands searched for the handle – found it, turned it, the door wasn't locked. He opened abruptly and stepped in.

Ran was slumped on her desk, her head pillowed in her folded arms. Her raven-black hair scattered amidst the piles of paperwork she had obviously been studying. She was fast asleep.

He sighed with relief. For a moment he'd thought – never mind. She didn't so much as stir when he closed the door and approached her, his shoes creaking on the parquet slits, and he must be badly sleep-deprived himself because even sound asleep and slumped on her desk, even with shadows under her eyes, even half-drooling onto her papers, she was still an angel on earth. She looked younger in sleep.

She slumbered on while he scooped her gently up in his arms, and actually purred and cradled against him as he carried her over to the bed. He laid her delicately down, taking care of her head, and her hand grasped at the shoulder of his jacket for a second, then let go. She hadn't stopped sleeping – she was probably lacking rest very much, what with touring the corridors at night, running after an unmatchable lunatic, classifying anonymous letters in the daytime, and plotting strategies. And dealing with him.

He flung a blanket over her body and she mumbled something indistinct under her breath. By the time he bent to her, whatever she'd said had reduced to peaceful breathing. She turned on her side and huddled lazily into the cover, curling up in a ball like a cat.

One shouldn't be allowed to be so beautiful.

He watched her a moment more, then turned all the lights off and exited the room.

-

Ran made no observation in the morning. If she had felt any surprise at waking up on her bed, fully dressed, curled up under a blanket, while she had fallen asleep amidst the papers on her desk, she showed no sign of it.

-

After dinner, Ran stood at the front door, of which only one pane was open whilst she leant against the other, and watched thoughtfully outside. The sun had set some time before, just atop the hills on her right, and the sky in that corner was a light azure, still drenched in the last rays of the drowning light.

Farther down south, black clouds were gathering and stretching out upwards; they already darkened the sky so deeply the line of the mountains was hardly discernible – only a handful of stray lights from a distant town ascertained the presence of a ground there. The separation between the clear blue firmament on one side and those heavy black clouds on the other, standing out sharply in dusk, receded every second; rolling, they devoured space towards the point where the sun had sunk.

Northwards, dark clouds were equally assembling, so tightly they spread like a misty curtain over the hills: slowly but surely, the two masses advanced towards one another to close around the clearer blue – thinner clouds already intertwined in that interval, threading together like masterly-worked pieces of black lace. Sometimes, their top half cleared into white, touched with gold, when the last lingering remains of sunlight lit them from behind.

The air was rainy and heavy, the atmosphere charged with that electricity that foretells a storm. Lightening was already at work in the southern corner; short but dazzling streaks of silver flashed against the black skyline, and they were, after a few seconds' wait, followed by the trembling roll of thunder. It must be raining there, and during the night, in all likelihood, the wind would pull the storm in their own direction.

Ran shuddered with cold, got back inside, and closed the door.

The tension and pressure built up gradually, and it was a little after ten, while she was working at her desk, that the skies finally opened with a thundering crack. She hastily closed her window, which she had left open, and in doing so she glanced outside: the black, lead-like clouds looming over the entire horizon, the rustle of trees' branches shaken by the wind, the first drops crashing onto the windowpane, and their rapid acceleration to drop every sound, eventually, into the senseless sound of rain coming down.

-

**The last part of this chapter – the sky and storm – truly happened. We were driving home after a vacation in Normandy a while back, and the sky was just that shade of blue and black and rolling clouds. It was stunningly beautiful.**

**Then it started to rain. That was less funny.**

**xD well, anyway, end of the chapter. See you next time, minna. –holds out plate– cookies? (yeah, yeah, I'm repeating myself… but cookies 'n' fanfiction is life. Yes.)**


	9. In the Nighttime

Author's note:

**Author's note: Some people complained that there wasn't much action in the last two or three chapters (and Shinichi and Ran's relationship, what do you make of that?) You want action? I'll give you action. And probably enough clues to make a nice little theory of your own.**

**Chappie dedicated to Rani-chan, who pisses me the hell off with guessing everything.**

**Warning: I am not Japanese, much less a mangaka. Consequence? I don't own anything at all except a pretty good cookie recipe.**

**-**

**Chapter 9 – In The Nighttime**

**-**

_The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two…_

Patricia E. Presutti

_In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o' clock in the morning, day after day._

F. Scott Fitzgerald

-

The shrilling scream snapped Ran awake, and for half a second she lay senseless in her bed, blood beating hard and strong against her eardrums.

The sound, still echoing through the passages, was terrifyingly familiar – it was ten years old and the scream of someone being murdered. She flung her covers off in haste, not bothering about turning the lights on, not bothering about her slippers – in her run for the door, her senses instinctively taking in that it was still raining, her body tense like a stretched piece of string – she wrenched it open, dashed out into the corridor, tore down the corner and collided full force with someone.

She toppled over backwards, her momentum abruptly broken, and tried to cushion her fall best as she could. In the surrounding darkness, a masculine voice swore loudly and creatively; and her mind was still misty and confused from interrupted sleep because it groped in the dark for a few more seconds before it realized whose voice that was.

"Shinichi," she rasped, breathlessly.

"Ran?" he gasped, and a hand found her arm, slid down to her wrist, helped her stand up. "You okay?"

"I guess—" a second scream broke her off, clearer and louder and more terrifyingly real than the first, and they both started and broke in a run in the direction it came from. Lights were turned on in rooms as they passed, and voices and running noises echoed theirs in parallel passages, until they finally arrived to a closed door in front of which stood Asama-san and Ebihara-san.

"Does it come from in here?" Shinichi said, grasping for air. Ran grabbed his arm and clutched her heart, breathing heavily; she saw Asama-san and Ebihara-san brace themselves against whatever was going to come. Araide's and Sakagushi-san's voices shouted behind them – oh god, this had such an accent of déjà-vu… it was Ikenami-san's bedroom door.

It was also locked. They heard noises coming from the inside as Shinichi and Akira-san joined forces to break it down – things crashing and clattering as if there was a struggle, and the door finally wrenched open with a heavy crackle. Inside was Ikenami-san kneeling, who slowly crumpled down like a stone to the floor and lay motionless.

Shinichi ran in, Ran hot on his heels. The practitioner was white as marble, still as a statue.

Shinichi crouched by her side, scooped her up, checked her pulse – uncertain of what to do, Ran stopped cold, hearing behind her, by the door where were assembled the frightened guests, shouts of, "Call an ambulance – quick!" "And the police!" "No – not the police!" "This is _murder!_"

"She's breathing," Shinichi put in, as if on cue. "Faintly. She's drunk something."

Ran picked up a broken glass lying by the bedside table, its edges sharp and pointed. It was empty but for one or two drops of what very much looked like water. Obviously she'd drunk the whole glass just before collapsing and dropping it. Poison, then? There was a small bottle of white pills, still open, standing on the bedside table.

"She's been poisoned," shouted Shinichi from behind her, in an urgent, though steady voice. This was nothing new to him; he'd witnessed hundreds of scenes such as this one. His objective for now was to keep her alive. "We need to rinse her throat. Something with proteins."

Ran noticed a jug of milk on the bedside table and hastily brought it over to him; he snapped it from her hands and turned back to Ikenami-san's inert body. She rounded on the gathered guests, who were still fidgeting on the threshold, not daring coming in. "Has anyone called the police?"

"Ken-kun ran down to phone the nearest clinic," Akira-san prompted. He was white as a sheet, and did not seem able to move his eyes from the body. The others seemed to be in the same state, bar Sakagushi-san, who looked strangely calm and composed.

Ran nodded slowly, told them not to come in on any account, and went back to investigate. She glanced at Shinichi while passing by towards the window; his face was serious and frowning, concentrating on his task. The milk made a soft sound of dripping onto the floor.

The windowpane was closed from the inside, and so had been the door. Nobody could have gone out, unless there was some secret passageway between the rooms – knowing Sonoko, that wouldn't have surprised her.

But the thought of a murderer forcing poison down a practitioner's mouth and then escaping through a secret passageway he should not even have known about was ridiculous; besides, the shattered items whose breaking they had heard from outside were – had been china or glass vases on the chimneypiece. Ikenami-san had probably grasped at it for support, and they had fallen off.

Kenjin-san ran back up to them then, breathless. "I called an ambulance," he panted. "B-but the… the storm will probably retard them. They're on their way…"

"If I can do anything, miss," put in Briggs, who'd arrived in the meantime, dressed in a green-and-red dressing gown.

"You can," said Ran, and then thought about it. "Gather them all in the drawing room downstairs, and _keep them there_. We don't want them to run everywhere while we can still find clues. Pour out coffee, put them to sleep, whichever – keep them occupied and under supervision. Oh, and send Emily up here, too." She looked back at Shinichi, in case he wanted anything, but he didn't seem even to have heard. He was doing mouth to mouth now.

Emily, once arrived on location, turned out to be extremely nervous and constantly peering into the bedroom. "Oh, miss, is the lady dead, miss ?"

"_No,_" Ran said. She closed the door. "She's _not_ going to die. We'll save her – there's an ambulance on its way. I want to know, Emily…" she held up the bottle of medicate she'd found on Ikenami-san's beside table, "you're taking care of the bedrooms on this floor, so you're in charge of Ikenami-san's. Do you happen to recognize this?"

Emily's face went very pale, and she began to talk very quickly. "Oh, yes, miss – that's Ikenami-san's medicine. She said she had to take two of these little pills every evening because she had cardiac troubles—"

Cardiac troubles.

"And she asked me to remind her every evening to take them, miss, when I come to make the fire, because she is – was – a very forgetful person, and she had forgotten to order a new bottle of them since the former was almost finished so _I_ had to run to the village one morning and order it for her but they didn't have it right away so we had to wait until three days ago and thankfully there was pills left in the first bottle, but _I_ had to go and fetch the second—"

Out of this mess only one thing was clear: the second bottle of medicine had been brought in three days before, and she hadn't found any plastic opening clip on the beside table, nor in the dustbin, nor under the bed, where she had been looking for clues – which meant the bottle had been open upon arrival, or every evening since, but not tonight. And in the meantime, _someone_ had borrowed it and put poison inside. Unless—

"Emily," she cut in the diatribe, "did Ikenami-san usually lock her door?"

"Well, no, miss – only in the nighttime. She didn't own any jewellery, she used to tell me – and her precious papers and researches she put them in the safe downstairs. Only she didn't like to be disturbed when she slept. Once I came up late for my service and I find the door locked, and when I knock—"

So virtually anyone could have gone in and done whatever they wanted with the medicine. Granted that they knew about the bottle, what it contained, and where it was kept. But whoever it was could easily have extracted this from Emily, like she was doing right now, or from Ikenami-san herself…

The ambulance arrived twenty minutes afterwards, under a pouring rain. It came from a private clinic, so there wouldn't be any publicity unless the police was called for – a scheme which, Ran found when she went to check on the guests, they were all resolutely opposed to.

As she walked back up to the second floor she met Shinichi in mid-staircase, watching as two medics in white transported Ikenami-san downstairs on a stretcher.

"I'd probably best go to the clinic with them," he told her. "That way, if – anything happens, I'll be able to call you up and tell you before I come back. Unless you'd rather go," he added uncertainly, "and I stay to survey the guests."

"No – go," Ran said. "It's okay here, I won't be alone. We won't leave this drawing-room. Briggs and Dr Araide can see to that with me. Go by all means. And don't forget to call."

They started down the stairs behind the medics. "I'll probably be a few hours," Shinichi said wearily. "What did Emily say?"

So he _had_ been listening after all. "That Ikenami-san had cardiac troubles, and she had to take pills every evening to keep it going." She held up the bottle of medicine and he took it and studied it carefully. "I see," he said. "There's strychnine in this."

"Strychnine?" Ran looked at it. "You don't think—"

"I don't know," Shinichi said thoughtfully. "She may have taken too important a dose, of course – voluntarily or not." He pocketed the bottle. "I'll take it with me and have it analysed at the clinic, so we'll know exactly what's in it, and what dose Ikenami-san ingested." They reached the foot of the stairs and the brilliantly lit hall, into which the front door, its two panes wide open, cut a tall rectangle of dark-blue night.

"I'd best go quickly," Shinichi said. "I'll lose myself in the storm if I can't direct myself after their taillights. I'll be back as soon as I can." He went outside, Ran following suit, regardless of the buckets of water that dropped on her shoulders. "I'll call you up once I get there, and then again when I know the results of the operation."

The ambulance's doors clacked shut. Shinichi started down towards the parked cars, then turned back to Ran. Standing on top of the steps with her long drenched dark-green nightgown sticking to her limbs and her wet black entangling around her arms, she looked like a water nymph. Her dark eyes fixed on his seriously.

"Ran, I—"

The ambulance's engine started up in a roar, and he jumped and ran to his car. Ran saw him climb in hastily and slam the door; the vehicle pulled out of its park place, circled in a long gravelled slide, and started after the ambulance. She watched it till the taillights had disappeared past an abrupt turn of the road, and beyond it there was only rain.

-

It was a long, dreary night. In the drawing-room where the guests were assembled, there was no sound to be heard but the slow breathing of each, and the ticking by of seconds on the wall-clock. Five to one. Fifteen past one. Half-past one. From time to time Briggs would tour the room with a fresh pot of coffee. Asama-san suggested they should be supplied with pillows and blankets and rest, but there were only a few vague nods: nobody seemed very inclined to sleep.

The rain was beating violently against the windowpane. Ran had seated herself there when she had come back down after changing clothes, and was curled up with her arms around her knees, looking outside into the night. She was waiting for car lights to appear there, though she knew they would not blink through the darkness until many hours.

Shinichi had called, as promised, upon arriving at the clinic, but he'd had time only for a few words and the transmission had been badly damaged by the storm raging. Shinichi's voice had gone havoc in the middle of a sentence ("Take care not to—") and when she'd tried to call him back the line was occupied. She nonetheless sent Briggs to try again at regular intervals.

Twenty before two. Five to two. Five past two. This time seemed by more and more slowly. Ran's gaze wandered.

Asama-san, sitting closest to her in an armchair, eyes partly closed as though he was half-sleeping. Akira-san and Kenjin-san, seated side by side and looking tiredly uncertain. Sakagushi-san, opposite her, petting the cat with cool composure. Ebihara-san, in his hands a book whose pages he wasn't turning. Dr Araide and Hikaru-san, huddled together on a couch with his arms around her shoulders. Briggs, standing stiffly by the coffee table, one hand on a chair's back to support himself. The world was thundering to an end outside, and they were all sitting there, waiting for it.

And again, tonight more strongly and strikingly than all the times before, she couldn't help but wonder, Which? Which of them hid behind the apparent attitude the deranged mind that wrote the letters, had shot Sakagushi-san, tried to strangle Hikaru-san, tried to poison Ikenami-san? The anonymous-letters case of the beginning had expanded to a degree way too dangerous and alarming to be dealt all alone – if their culprit was ready to come to murder extremities to reach whatever his aim was…

If it was murder. If it wasn't simply a mistake in dosing, or even suicide. There was no way to know – at least until Shinichi came back. If Ikenami-san was saved, she'd be able to speak, and, failing that, the mere analysis of the medicine bottle would at least give them some information—

But Ikenami-san was a practitioner – a forensic expert, no less, and she would never have made a mistake in taking her pills, especially if she had been used to taking them for years. And there were simpler means to commit suicide; only an empty syringe would be an easy, much less painful way to kill oneself. Or sleeping pills. So it had to be murder.

Did it? Didn't she have a tendency to see murder everywhere, after so many cases she had witnessed and helped to solve? Both Shinichi and her father were corpse-magnets…

It's the atmosphere, she thought, sending Briggs to call the hospital once more. It's drawing on my nerves. It's trying to make me fall down. All of this is sordid. Ikenami-san poisoned… Shinichi gone off in the storm… as if to confirm her thoughts, the rain rattled more strongly than ever on the windowpane, and a bolt of lightening flashed in the darkness like a dragon of fire. The skies shook. Shinichi…

Briggs came back in. "The lines are cut, miss," he said, and walked back to the coffee table, his face similar to that of a poker player's.

Half-past two. Fifteen minutes to three. Five to three. She was glancing at the clock more and more frequently, and yet every eternity in between seemed to stretch its length to longer than the former. Her mind lost itself in calculations. It had been two hours. They had a twenty minutes drive over to the hospital – half an hour, allowing for the rain. The operation wouldn't have taken more than an hour. Then the drive back… Shinichi should have been back already.

A quarter past three.

Akira-san had nodded off. Kenjin-san had wrapped him up in a blanket. Sakagushi-san had stopped petting the cat, but it didn't complain; it was sound asleep. The book had fallen from Ebihara-san's hands, though his eyes were still wide open… once or twice she felt herself falling backwards, but each time she caught herself up with a jerk.

"Coffee?" Briggs said, arriving with a steaming mug.

"Thank you."

The hot drink revived her a little and she kept it warm between her palms, curled up on the windowseat with her knees drawn to her chest and her nightgown-covered feet on the velvet cushion. She went on looking out into the night, waiting for lights that still wouldn't appear. _What_ was he doing…

Half past three, and Shinichi still wasn't back.

Shinichi… "_What you really mean is, you don't want me at all, not even to solve this case. I'm only bringing back ugly memories – a nuisance, in your perfectly thought-out life. My simple presence here revolts you. … It's past. Can't you leave it all there?"_

"_When we are done and over with this case, I'll take you out to coffee and… back away from your life. For good."_

"_I'm tired." _And so am I. So am I.

-

The storm didn't calm down even a little until four in the morning, and only then did Shinichi come back. He opened the drawing-room door, startling every one, and Ran chocked a yawn to come forward – then stopped. Shinichi kept silent for a second. His hair and jacket were still damp from running under the rain, and he looked _exhausted_. His features were drawn-out, his rare gestures slow and weary.

The room held its breath.

He accepted coffee from Briggs, smiled a tired smile and said, "She's okay. She's been saved. She'll live."

The sigh of relief was common and immense. Smiles broke onto the faces, tongues started up again, yawns were made more daring and affirmed. Ran wished she could go and speak to Shinichi, but he was monopolized by three of the guests, and when one left another took their place. Fatigue swooped down on her shoulder with a heavy weight, and it was only with a vague smile and a tired mind that she answered to Akira-san's gleeful conversation.

At length Shinichi relieved her by calling out, "Look, it's a quarter past four, and you must all be exhausted. You'd better all go to bed; things will get clearer in the morning. Ran, I'd like to speak to you."

He walked her back to her room. In the long corridors, the sound of their footsteps echoed gloomily. "The operation took more than an hour, and then I had to wait for the results of the analysis. It took some time, but I thought I might as well wait up for it. Besides, the storm was raging so hard I wouldn't even have been able to leave the village—"

Ran had to clutch at the staircase's railing not to fall over with fatigue. "What did the analyst say?" she asked wearily.

"The medicate itself does contain strychnine," Shinichi said. "Only she absorbed far too important a dose of it – about half a grain. The thing is, what little poison was put inside the bottle would not have been lethal, if the medicine's strychnine itself hadn't added up to it, thus threatening her life."

"What?" They reached the second floor and walked for a few minutes in silence. "What do you mean – that the drug was added to the pills in full knowledge that even a non-lethal dose would eventually be fatal, what with the strychnine _in_ the medicine adding up and – in that case the culprit must have _some_ medical knowledge," Ran added thoughtfully.

"Well, yes – that's a possibility. But I tend to think something else." They stopped in front of her door and she turned to face him. "Ran, I've noticed something – there've been three murder attempts until now and all three failed. At first I thought it was just random attempts, meant to frighten us off – but after tonight… I can't help thinking our man did _not_ know about the presence of strychnine in the medicate and he did _not_ mean to kill. He hadn't predicted those consequences – Ikenami-san wasn't meant to die, and she nearly did. And that follows in the continuation of those crimes which all backfired, one after the other – I should think he's trying to confuse us."

"The ABC murders," Ran murmured. "Hiding the real crime in a succession of them."

"Possibly," Shinichi said abstractedly. "Probably, in fact. Our man has read Agatha Christie." He smiled wryly down at her, and then appeared to notice the state of utmost fatigue she was in. Her hand gripped the doorknob so hard its knuckles had gone white. "God, you're exhausted – and I'm keeping you up with my babbling. I'm so sorry. Go to bed. You need sleep."

"Yeah," Ran said tiredly. "Things will get clearer in the morning, um?"

"Technically, it _is_ morning," Shinichi said, with a faint grin. "Good-night, then – what's left of it."

"Good-night."

She closed the door behind her, turned off all the lights – the bedroom fell in blues and blacks and greys. She climbed blindly into bed, immediately sank sound asleep, and was not disturbed by a single dream thorough the rest of the night.

-

Now go on and think. Anyone's got ideas as to who's the criminal? (gosh, I enjoy myself here. A HUGE deal. –niark­–) If anybody guesses right they get a special cookie celebration! –grins and holds out plate for readers­–

**Liked it? Hated it? Want cookies? Lemme know. x3**


	10. Truth Is

**A/N: Alright. I confess all. I'm late. **_**Again.**_** Don't kill the cat. –wags cat-tail–**

**Anyway. –coughs– This chapter focuses mainly on giving Shinichi and Ran a good kick in the ass ('cause, honestly, they need it) and reminding you tantei's of all the evidence and all the suspects cross-examined so far, so you can come up with some theory of your own before Shinichi actually gives the solution in two chapter's time. (You know you can.)**

**Disclaimer: (Do I really have to?) Little me owns nothing at all, except a huge lot of fun in placing the whole DC cast in embarrassing positions and then prodding at them. Come on… catch the cookie.**

**-**

Chapter 10 – Truth Is

**-**

'_When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.'_ Sherlock Holmes

-

Ran slept soundly through eight hours and woke up at half-past eleven with a much clearer mind; feeling, after she had showered and dressed, much refreshed both with herself and with the case at hand. Briggs, mind-reading as always, had placed a breakfast tray outside her door (and he must have had foreseen the exact time of her waking up, too, for the milk was cool and soft and the coffee was hot) and she ate slowly at her window, thinking over what Shinichi had dug up the evening before.

The ABC murders. Yes, there was a definite possibility. And it explained the randomness of the crimes their culprit had committed, or tried to commit until now – if he had been trying to confuse them all along, the whole complex of the letters, the messages left in red paint on the walls, the dossier's disappearance and re-appearance, the wreckage of Makoto's office, the different aggressions, all made sense.

_Some_ things did not, though – how the Poltergeist had entered Makoto-kun's office to begin with, but that, if one reasoned logically, would have to fit in somewhere once everything was cleared. It was the little snag, the catch, the incident of the dog in the nighttime – the one thing that caught in the perfect machine of their deductions – but the one thing also that was the culprit's weak flank, his Achilles' heel. It'd always worked so far – it was the only way he could defeat them but also the only way they could skim round his tricks and get a face-to-face confrontation.

Shinichi must have gone through the same conclusions, too – such as they were.

She finished her coffee, brushed away the scrubs of bread that had fallen off, tied her hair in a loose knot, and went out. She galloped down the stairs, only to run straight into Shinichi, who'd been coming up the opposite way. They staggered for a second,, balance uncertain on the steps, then settled themselves back again.

"Shinichi – I was going to look for you. I was thinking–"

"Me, too. What do you say to taking a break today – leaving the mansion after lunch, going to enjoy nature for a while. We're being oppressed here; outside we'll be able to think it better. Away from _all influences_," he added, with a pointed look at Ebihara-san in the hall downstairs.

"What's he done?" Ran mouthed.

"Tried to extract from me what we've found so far," he mouthed back. "Looks like he's upset about something. We'd better be careful from now on to who's listening when we're talking about the case. It must be yesterday's incident that triggered his questions," he added thoughtfully.

"Do you think he's—" Ran started, watching Ebihahra-san disappear in the breakfast room.

"I don't know," Shinichi said. "It would be a risky trick. But maybe it's just another one of his twisted schemes. So!" he continued, in a louder voice. "You agree with taking the afternoon off?"

"What?" Ran said, caught-out. "Yes – sure. Why not?" She lowered her voice again, suspiciously. "What ARE you up to?"

"Nothing," he grinned. It was almost the old grin. The one back to seventeen, when Conan-kun had not yet intruded. "Nothing. We'll go after lunch, then. I'll see you at two – I'll be waiting by the car. All right?"

"All right," she said bewilderly, and he smiled a softer smile and pressed her hand before he walked back down.

Accordingly, when she came down at two and paused on top of the outside steps, he _was_ waiting by the car. Hands in his pockets, he was watching the endless continuation of hills with a serious, mournful look, and he was so absorbed she had to touch his arm for him to start and turn to her.

"Gosh – sorry – I was spacing out. I've had too little sleep lately," he excused himself with a sheepish smile.

"Haven't we all," Ran said. She climbed in the car and shut the door. "So where're we going?"

"Wherever you want," was the gallant reply as he started up the engine. "I'll only put my foot down at one thing – let's get away from here. This place is starting to freak me out. First ten years ago, and then now–" he pulled out from in between her car and Asama-san's, circled left with a long gravel shower, and started towards the bridge. "But apart from that, you decide alone. My wheel is at your command."

Ran realized she was blushing like a common schoolgirl and turned hastily towards the window. "I've phoned the clinic before lunch," she said, trying to disguise embarrassment behind an unchecked flow of words. "It seems that Ikenami-san woke up without any after-effects. We could go and see her."

"Good idea," Shinichi agreed. He drove easily past the bridge, and onto the sinuous road. "That'd be a starting point. By the way, I drew the conversation on mystery novels at breakfast – seems that they are _all_ familiar with those. Kano-kun and Kenjin-san had no difficulty at all in admitting that they had read loads of Agatha Christie books – Kano-kun even offered to lend me some."

"It was a far cry," Ran said with a slight smile. "It wouldn't work so easily."

"I know. But it was worth a try."

Their get-well visit to Ikenami-san was anything but instructive. The practitioner, very white against her white pillow, was more of a mute than she ever had been, and what little information they extracted from her brought no new light on the matter: all that she knew was, that she had taken two pills that evening, per usual, and had not tasted anything wrong until she had begun to feel the pain.

No, there had been nothing wrong with the medicine, to look at. Yes, she never closed her door in the daytime – she didn't see any reason why she should, since her precious possessions were locked up in the safe downstairs, and only Briggs had the key to that.

Ran rather saw the reason, but made no observation; and after a few more minutes of useless interrogations they bid their goodbyes and departed. "The woman's always the same," growled Shinichi as they got back to the car and pulled out of the parking lot. "When I was trying to solve that case two years ago and she was supposed to examine the dead man's body to tell us _when_ he had died, she was exactly the same. One piece of information at the time."

They drove on. The car ran rapidly through the gold-and-brown woods, whooshing away the fallen leaves. After yesterday night's storm, the air was fresh and cold and purified, and a clear smell of damp ground drifted up to them through the window Ran had pulled down. A pale sun was shining overhead in a white-silver sky.

They left the woods on their left and edged a ravine smoothly; beyond, the hills were undulating in a match of autumnal shades. Ran, looking first at the panorama, let her gaze stray on Shinichi – his abstracted face in driving, one hand on the wheel and the other on the brake, the arm, tense and relaxed together, the shoulder and the shade of the neck – then back at the face, the mouth, the eyes – the blue eyes, flickering from one point to another–

He glanced at her. "What?" he said, a rapid smile tugging at his lips.

She couldn't help one, either. "Nothing." She stared back ahead at the road with as much dignified an air as she could muster. It was hard. "I've been… thinking."

He turned back to the wheel, with what she hoped was _not_ an amused look. "Don't hurt yourself."

"Hey!"

Towards mid-afternoon they stopped at a teashop in a village they passed, and between muffins and scones and teacups their case invited itself back among them. "I wonder," Ran murmured as she watched her lump of sugar dissolve longuishly into the green-brownish tea, "what's the reason for out man to do all this. His mobile, I mean. He must have one to distort to such extremities, right?"

Shinichi stopped in mid-muffin, swallowed hard, and replied, "I don't know. One of the main rules in detective work is that when you know How, you know Who – in other words, when you've found the mobile and the means, you've found the culprit. I've witnessed it many times, but in this particular case, it's impossible – it's only helpful when it's a first-degree case, like a single murder, but this is a level higher. The clues are strewn in all directions, so we can't solve anything with having to solve something else beforehand. It's a vicious circle, really."

Ran turned thoughtfully her teaspoon in the rippling liquid. "You know, I've had this impression from the start that our Poltergeist is leading us exactly the way he wants us to go. Maybe if we tried to undo everything we've found so far and started all over again on a blank page–"

He was looking silently at her and she realized suddenly the double meaning her words could have. Presently he averted his eyes, and the moment passed, leaving only behind a sort of bitter taste in one's mouth. "Yes, well," he said. "Maybe," and bit back into the suffering muffin.

"Then we should try to lay aside our personal feelings," Ran persisted, determinedly keeping as professional a voice as she could muster, "and list the suspects while we've still got the chance."

"Why not," Shinichi agreed, but unconvincingly. "We can but try." He mentioned the waitress over and asked for writing materials. Ran left them argue over a teashop should stand as a stationer's store and piled up empty plates on the other side of the table, perching the remaining scones and muffins on top, so as to manage a practical space between the two of them. The waitress stalked away, having very presumably lost the battle, and Shinichi turned back to her.

"Come to think of it, Ran, that's a good idea. Shall we write the suspects down under Means, Motives and Opportunities, or in chronological order?"

"The latter," Ran said, sipping tea. "The comparison should be easier between the suspects. That's how I act when I've got to deal with a particularly tough defence to break."

The waitress came back then, suddenly all smiles. She was only a few years younger than themselves, and she must have realized who Shinichi was in the meantime because she laid a pan and jotter in front of him with batting eyelashes and a cooing "_Here_ you are, sir!"

Ran glanced at her companion, anxious to witness his reaction at being assaulted with fangirls all over again, but he hardly spared the girl a rapid look and thanks before he applied himself to his task. Ran drained the last of her tea and bent over the notebook, feeling foolishly satisfied with the world at large.

"Where shall we begin?"

"At the beginning," she said cheerfully. "That's usually the best place to start."

He grinned at her and wrote down Sakagushi-san's name at the head of the first page. "She's our main suspect, isn't she?" he answered her questioning look. "And we _have_ to begin somewhere. You said yourself personal feeling should be kindly shown the way out."

"So I did. Go on, detective. What about her? Is she in fact the daughter of a rich maharajah in exile, trying to reassert her claims to the throne by calling the limelight onto her? Or the great-great aunt of Kano-san and Hikaru-san, who are really lost cousins, and she's trying to kill them both to be the only heiress to their great and hidden fortune?"

"Of course – and Ebihara-san is in fact Frankenstein, whom she's revived two years ago to help her while in her grim purposes. Who's Asama-san – Kaitou KID?" he said, laughing. "Now _be_ serious."

"It's that tea. I knew those herbs tasted weird. Go on, before I get worse."

"All right. Here goes–"

SAKAGUSHI Shizue, lawyer

During the wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office _Was one of the first on location. Stepped inside, like everybody else. No paint stains to be seen._

During her own aggression _Said she had gone off in pursuit of the culprit but can show no evidence of it, bar Asama-san saying he heard them running by his bedroom door. Was shot, not badly, by her own revolver. Evidence of the mirror. (Query: Shot herself?)_

During the aggression on Hikaru-san _Was sitting with Araide and K. S. during the events, so necessity of an accomplice. Has tamed the cat, so she can have locked it in a room for M. R. to find, so as to prevent her from being on location._

During the failed murder attempt on Ikenami-san _Arrived among the last. Strangely calm, didn't show any sign of anxiety thorough the evening and night._

Particular characteristics _A remarkably sharp mind and capacity of foresight. Never once excluded the possibility that she could be guilty herself. Before the facts, said she had received quite a number of exceptionally insulting anonymous letters, but could easily have done them herself._

"That's a pretty set of suspicions, but no evidence to speak of."

"No. That's why I didn't want her to be our culprit."

"Well, then, who next?"

ASAMA Taichi, lawyer

During the wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office _Like Sakagushi-san, was one of the first on location. Stepped inside, like everybody else. No paint stains to be seen, either._

During the aggression on Sakagushi-san _Didn't show up. Said later that he'd heard the gunshot and the running but didn't bother himself, feeling others would handle it better than he would, and too much people would only aggravate everything. Seems rather unlikely, under the circumstances._

During the aggression on Hikaru-san _Wasn't supposed to know anything about it, but was uncommonly gentle to her the following day and generally kind ever since._

During the failed murder attempt on Ikenami-san _One of the first on location. Kept grave the whole night. Bedroom nearest to Ikenami-san's, could easily have gone in and borrowed the bottle unbeknownst._

Particular characteristics _With Sakagushi-san, was one of the two who could speak freely of the case with K. S. or M. R. Never showed any kind of lunatic tendencies. Was one of the most hated by the culprit, by the sight of the letters he received. Was the first to mention K. S.'s name when looking for a detective._

"_None_ of the guests show any lunatic tendencies."

"Are you certain? Let's finish this first."

_KANO Akira, son of KANO Himura, industrialist (the wealthy kind)_

During the wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office_ Arrived last on location, just before M. R. did. Couldn't help touching everything. Red paint stains on his right hand._

During the aggression of Sakagushi-san _Didn't show up. Said later on that he'd taken sleeping pills before going to bed because he hadn't had enough sleep lately (meaning?). According to him, slept soundly through the whole night and only learnt about the matter the following morning. Likely (query?)._

During the aggression on Hikaru-san_ Wasn't supposed to know anything, but turned out to know quite a lot the following evening. When asked, said it was the main topic to dinner at their end of the table. Added that Kenjin-san had told him about it, having learnt it from Ikenami-san. (Fact.)_

During the failed murder attempt on Ikenami-san _Shocked. Pale like a sheet, couldn't help looking at the body. Fell asleep during the wait._

Particular characteristics _More clever than he looks. (Billard.) After the aggression on Sakagushi-san, was curiously anxious that the culprit should be a man, for no apparent reason. The incident of the phone call in the library._

"I expect you know what's coming off this."

"Yes. Who do you think–"

"I'm not certain. Of course, it could be something completely different from our case. Or not.

KENZAKI Kenjin, politician

During the wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office _Stepped inside the room and walked in a pool of red paint. Gave the slipper to Briggs for cleaning the same evening. Window giving onto the quad, which means he can easily have gone and marked the grounds, and two rows exactly under Ikenami-san's window (but that means nothing at all)._

During the aggression on Sakagushi-san _Arrived right behind Araide and helped Sakagushi-san back to her room. Found an anonymous letter slid under her door when he opened it. Is known to be a hunter, and therefore knows how to handle a gun, especially in order to not kill – which is even harder than trying to kill._

During the aggression on Hikaru-san _Wasn't supposed to know anything, but told all about it to Akira-san before dinner. Presumably told by Ikenami-san (who never talks to anyone)._

During the failed murder attempt on Ikenami-san _Ran off to call an ambulance and sat restlessly all evening._

Particular characteristics _Of a remarkable cheerful and beaming composure that could be a mask and couldn't. Has never shown any kind of particular nervousness toward the case. Has only received a small amount of letters, which, if he turns out to be our culprit, is rather clever of him._

"I suppose we can leave out Araide and his wife."

"Oh, yes. Definitely out of suspicion."

"Very well. That leaves us only with–"

EBIHARA Toshiaki, industrialist

During the wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office _Arrived last of all, behind M. R. Was the only one who didn't go inside the room, and mostly ranted all evening. Letters attacked him violently after that._

During the aggression on Sakagushi-san _Needed two glasses of brandy to get over the shock. Afterwards, cursed the Poltergeist heartily but was one of the most eager to refuse the intervention of the police or anybody exterior. Particularly hostile to M. R., probably for the same reason._

During the aggression on Hikaru-san _Was the only one who didn't say a word about it, and changed topics every time the subject was put forward. (Akira-san and Kenjin-san's evidence.)_

During the failed murder attempts on Ikenami-san_ No behaviour out of the ordinary, that we know of. The next day (: today), tried to extract information out of K. S., to no avail. (M. R. Thank Goodness!)_

Particular characteristics _Had a row with Kenjin-san from the very first. Refuses to talk of anything in rapport to the case. Was rather attacked by violent letters, during the first two weeks, but that fell off more recently. Mostly silent and severe. (K. S. Frankenstein. M. R. Yes. Most definitely.)_

"And now there's the matter of Ikenami-san."

"Ikenami-san? She was targeted, wasn't she?"

"Yes, and so was Sakagushi-san. Besides, she could have had an accomplice who grew tired of her and decided to bump her off. Here it is…"

IKENAMI Isami, GP

During the wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office _Was still dressed when she came around, with a lamp torch. Her fingerprints were found on the door's knob, but she claims she was mistaken and thought the room was the safe's earlier in the day. Being not able to come in, went for Briggs' blood, and got directed to the right room. Briggs witness._

During the aggression on Sakagushi-san _Helped Araide with cleaning and bandaging the wound, and nothing wrong came out of it. Later, agreed that she was used to handling guns, as well – women's guns, not men's._

During the aggression on Hikaru-san _According to Akira-san and Kenjin-san, told the latter about it. If true, where did she learn it?_

During the failed murder attempt on herself_ In the evening, took two pills of her usual medicine, ingesting poison (possibly strychnine) along with it. Was found in time and transported as soon as possible to the nearest clinic. There was saved after an hour and a half's operation. (Murder? Suicide?)_

Particular characteristics _ If guilty, must either have tried to commit suicide or have had an accomplice who tried to finish her off. Never speaks to anyone, less of all now. Important point: doesn't possess a computer, or hides it somewhere safe where Emily didn't find it._

--

This took them the full afternoon end and part of the evening, and when at nine they came out of the smallish restaurant where they'd dined, the night had fallen long before. The jingle of the door as it opened then closed behind them, the clear and chilly air, the echoing sounds of the deserted street, and then the gentle depth of the seat, the blinking lights of the dashboard switching on in rapid succession, the soft rumble of the car all around them, like some animal purring contentedly.

They drove back through the woods from whence they had come, the car's lights sweeping on the road that stretched, it seemed, indefinitely before them, turn after curve and curve after turn.The forest rustled around them like it was alive, the wind blowing through the branches, the fallen leaves crackling as they passed on, the rapidly running sound of some animal frightened off by their passing.

The moon had risen, and as the woods moved to the right side of the road it showed in between the spacing trees. It wasn't full yet; a few more nights would be necessary to make it a perfect circle, or maybe it had been so a few nights ago. Passing by the car's windowpane, the trees' branches against it were black and finely coated as shadow puppets.

"Shinichi."

"H'm?"

"Can we stop here for a few minutes? The moon's beautiful tonight."

Obediently he slowed down and pulled up in a narrow ground lane that ended up in a field; he turned the engine off and with it the car's lights. Ran stepped out, shut the door, and walked a few steps down the path. The field continued flat some time longer and then lowered suddenly in a sharp steep; far ahead, more wooden hills were cut daintily against the sky, rustling gently under the breeze like stilled, enormous waves of moss-green water.

The moon shone above it all like a chipped pearl in a sky of blue and black, and it cast a silvery reflect onto their surroundings. Ran walked on a little farther.

It was a Shakespearean night, rustling and moving and murmuring; a nightingale trilling from some high branches; a small animal running swiftly in the grass. It was a little cold. She shuddered and rubbed her forearms.

When she turned back, Shinichi was still leaning against the side of his car, hands in his pockets, with a vague look as though some thought had just escaped his grasp and gone off into the wild. She daren't break his concentration and simply stood by his side till he gasped, startling her.

"Ran – I've got it."

His hand found hers, clutched at it, gripped it madly. "I've figured it out – of course – that's why the dog did nothing in the nighttime. We've been stupid fools from the start…" He was really excited; through the darkness, her eyes turned to hers in full detective mode.

And then it all deflated like a pierced balloon. His face fell severe, his mouth closed hard and his fingers let go of hers. "Get in the car," he said, abruptly but not unkindly. "Let's go back home."

He was silent all the way back. He drove determinedly, his eyes fixed on a point ahead and never diverting – he was ruminating his findings, Ran read on his face, and discovering there was not a certainty, not a single inch of evidence in it. It was useless trying to talk it out of him; although she would never admit to herself, she knew him far too well to even try.

At length she turned to the window and watched silently outside until they drove onto the bridge and towards the lights-strewn house. Only then, when he engaged himself into the parking lot, did Shinichi finally speak up. "I won't tell you what I've found, Ran."

She'd suspected that. "Why not?" she asked softly, taking off her belt.

He turned off the engine but didn't open his door – turned to her instead. "Because I don't have a clue whether I'm right or wrong. Not even the beginning of a proof," he said bitterly. He looked weary suddenly – tired and drained and younger in proportion. "And if my suspicions _are_ wrong – if the person I think is our culprit really isn't, you'll be surveying too little of the others."

"But you don't think you're wrong," Ran said, with her hand on the door's handle.

He looked at her in the black windowpane. "No," he said. "I don't."

-

**Not counting this one, there are four chapters left. I'll be–trying–to update faster, 'cause I want to be done by Christmas… and then I've got another chaptered fic for them in mind, so I should pass on smoothly from one to the other.**

**Thank you for reading. Cookies, anyone?**


	11. To Die

A/N: Ah, what the heck. I told you I'd update faster than I usually do. Besides, that next chapter of Gem's Entry is pissing me off, and I thought I might as well take it out on this. xP So don't expect so quick an update on Gems. It might be a week… maybe a week and a half till I post it. Or more. (Till then you can work on your AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME Arsene Lupin. –sideways glance at ami-chan-)

**Umm. Quite a lot of people thought this would be the 'YOU'RE THE CULPRIT!' chapter. … frankly, you should know better. xD**

**Disclaimer: Must I, really? For some reason, I don't really see Gosho-sensei coming to write fanfiction here… if he could just work faster on those manga updates of his… -skips off to see if the new chapter came out-**

**-**

**To Die**

**-**

'_To die would be an awfully big adventure.'_

_James Barrie, in _Peter Pan

_Also last words of his close friend Charles Frohman, just before he boarded the _Titanic

-

Ran went to bed that night and dreamt that Sakagushi-san was trying her for the murder of Kudo Shinichi.

-

In the morning things were clearer, fresher, and all in all rather satisfactory. Yesterday's break in the routine had had the merit to make her more realistic towards the whole situation, neither frightening nor troubled; besides, she had hardly even known Shinichi to make the wrong deduction before. Collecting evidence he at present lacked would be the work of a couple of days. With a bit of luck, by Thursday the culprit would be found, the problem fixed, the study dismissed and the remaining guests sent back to their homes.

With such happy expectations to look forward to, she came down to breakfast. Shinichi wasn't there, nor was he in the library where she had expected to find him, leaning over the dossier in the morning sun. She returned into the black and white-paved hall and asked Briggs who'd just entered through the foyer 'whether he knew where Kudo-san was'.

The unexpected answer struck her dumb. "He left early this morning, miss."

She was speechless for a second, then she asked what was most logical to ask, "Where d'he go?"

"To Tokyo, miss. He said you would know what for."

Of course. Elementary, my dear Mouri – he'd gone to fish around for evidence. Probably dived in the police archives in search for the past of the person he suspected… "Did he leave any message for me?"

"Yes, miss. He said not to tell a word, and not to forget to tour the corridors tonight. He said something is liable to happen. He added that he would be back as early as possible." He presented a sealed letter on a gold-framed silver plate. "The morning mail, miss."

The letter was from Sonoko. She read it in the library, still mourning Shinichi's departure. It announced her and Makoto's speedy return from Mexico, Makoto-kun having won the karate competition off-handedly; after hearing of the case's latest development, they had decided to shorten their stay and come back to Japan.

More good news. Shinichi would be back tomorrow, Sonoko and Makoto-kun the day after that, and the case would be solved in quiet tranquillity, away from all publicity or scandal. The perfect, fittest, most reasonable end of all.

And she would never see Shinichi again.

But that would have to be dealt with in time; for the moment, the case at hand demanded the whole of her attention. Hers and Shinichi's relationship was of little importance. (For some reason, she couldn't quite convince herself of that.)

-

The day wore on. Nothing whatsoever happened to break in the quiet routine that settled down – no anonymous letters, no wall-crashing event, no murder attempts, no nothing. Conversations were rare and slow; mostly everyone kept their guard up. Even at lunch, even at dinner there were but few words exchanged. Only in the evening, in the cosy drawing-room with fire sizzling in the hearth and rain rattling against the windows, did tongues get into movement again.

Ran entered in conversation with Sakagushi-san and Hikaru-san and watched warily as Araide passed from group to group, trying to cheer them up. From face to face weary smiles were forced, and the striking contrast between the cheerful behaviour of everyone at the beginning of their stay and their now silent, subdued attitude was clearer than ever.

The change was most prominent in Akira-san, who for all his cheekiness and nonchalance three weeks before, was now the gravest of them all. He hardly spoke to anyone, even to Kenjin-san – and if once or twice he made a move as though he wanted to go and sit by her it was hastily checked.

Her conversation with Hikaru-san and Sakagushi-san absorbed her at intervals. "–got married in Kyoto at his grandlmother's–"

"–very formal ceremony, I suppose–"

"–dressed in white–"

A usual, common conversation. She took her part in it but vaguely, uninterestedly, mind going over the last weeks and remembering Makoto-kun's office, the shattered mirror, the black cat jumping in her arms and meowing in her ear, Shinichi's tired expression in the warm glow of the fireplace, Ikenami-san's inert body on the bedroom carpet, the house's still lights from outside yesterday night, Sonoko's high-pitched laugh when she'd greeted her, and back again…

"–best man half an hour late–"

Asama-san was leaning against the chimneypiece, staring in the flames determinedly. She caught his eye and smiled at him; he smiled back and turned away. Kenjin-san was sipping coffee on the low couch, looking grim. Ikenami-san's chair stood empty by the bookcase, where no one had tried to move it.

"–but the ceremony was short."

"–couldn't do otherwise…"

Araide walked up to her and said she'd better take the first turn tonight. "I'll take the second," he added, "and Briggs offered to handle the third, since Kudo-kun is gone–" Ran nodded vaguely. This triggered something else. The conversation no longer interested her. Her mind strayed in yesterday's teashop, in the car running smoothly along the road and Shinichi's profile in backlighting…

"Ran-san?"

"… yes?"

"Are you alright?"

"Ye-es. Just spacing out."

--

She retreated early, leaving the battlefield void of any winner. Her mind too was a no man's land, and both affronting parties were tired and bleeding. Despite her best efforts, she could not help wondering after Shinichi – where he was now, whom he was with… it was probably just as well that there was a knock at the door just then.

Akira-san came in, with the facial expression of a disobedient child caught red-handed in the marmalade pot. "There's something I believe I ought to tell you," he confessed after she'd invited him to sit down. "If you'll listen to me–" he was nervous and agitated; his pale eyes fixed anxiously on Ran's.

"I'll listen to you," she promised. "Keep calm and speak slowly to make sure you don't forget anything." She thought she knew more or less what was coming, but better let him blurt it out. He had never looked so young and hollow – a child, a child, just a child.

"Slowly," he said, fidgeting in his armchair. "Yes – very well. It's–I mean–complicated. I–they–oh, damn it! I say, I'm not making myself very coherent."

"Not at all," Ran said, "but do go on."

He gave a chocked, strangled laugh. "Yes. Keep one's head, right? Very well – never look down." He coughed and resumed, "I know I told you my father had sent me here, but that wasn't exactly the, err–truth. That is to say, I came here _for_ him. I was called here – asked to come – by – well, I'd better not tell you that yet.

"The thing is, a week before I came here I received a phone call. The man – it was a man – told me that he hold secret information on my father, information that would possibly be ruining him if it ever came to be public. I – you cannot imagine what a shock that was to me."

He took a deep breath. "My father made a will, you see – and if he pegs out now all his money except a minute ten percent goes down to a ten-times removed third cousin or the like. I entirely depend upon him for money – _entirely_. And if he's ruined – if he goes down, I go down too.' He looked up, searching compassion on Ran's face, but she merely mentioned him to continue.

"I – yes. And so this man asked me to come down here as planned, and bring money. _Lots_ of money. That's – err – I mean–"

"Blackmail," Rain said bluntly. Akira-san started violently, and was not able to go on for several minutes.

"Yes. He told me that I'd receive instructions, and by Jove, I sure did. I got a letter. Not one of those anonymous cards – a sealed letter, all printed out. It told me to place the money in the telephone booth down in the hall, you know – but that was the night there was this wreckage – and when I checked the next morning the envelope hadn't bulged. I was there staring at it and then Briggs came down to say there was a phone call for me in the library – and then the man told me I hadn't done as I was told–"

"Yes," Ran said, coolly. "It wasn't very intelligent of you to leave the door ajar."

His head shot up and he goggled at her. "You _heard_ me?"

"Sort of. What happened next?"

"Well – I gave them the money in the end, but they asked for more and more – they started threatening me – they called at any hour of the day and night, saying they were going to divulge their information, they were able to push my father to the brink – to suicide – and it went on and _on…_ My _God!"_ he buried his face in his hands. "It was awful," he murmured between trembling fingers. "I didn't know whom I could talk to, and all those letters and e-mails…"

Ran stood and poured out a glass of sherry. "Drink," she said, forcing it into his hand. "Calm down. It's okay now. You do realize you should have told us ages ago, don't you?"

He took small sips of sherry, looking sheepish. "Yes. But I couldn't – not so easily. I thought – I was afraid, I guess." He drank slowly, considering. Alcohol seemed to revive him a little – he was less pale and less vampire-like, and his cheeks were redder. At length it was with determination that he looked up and added, "but this must come out now. That's why I told you."

Ran smiled a small, reassuring smile at him, which seemed to comfort him. "That's all right. Akira-san, can you tell me who it is, among the guests, whom you gave the money to?"

"I… yes." He cleared his throat again. "It's Ebihara Toshiaki-san."

Ebihara-san. Somehow, a part of her mind told her she shouldn't be surprised – Shinichi had probably guessed all about it. It was easy to see how the pieces of the puzzle, completely at random a few minutes ago, now perfectly fitted: Akira-san's phone call in the library and Kenjin-san having a row with Ebihara-san and the latter trying to extort information from Shinichi…

"I didn't know what to do," Akira-san was saying. "But after Ikenami-san was poisoned, I just couldn't–"

This drew Ran out of her reflections. "So you assume that Ebihara-san's responsible for this?"

"Why… yes," he replied, looking genuinely surprised. "He must be. There can't be two people in this – Ebihara-san blackmailing me, and somebody _else_sending those letters and aggressing people, can it?"

"I don't know," Ran said thoughtfully. "There's always the possibility, of course. Or he may have an accomplice. I'll tell Shinichi about it – I expect he already knows about this–" she stopped, catching the leering look Akira-san was giving her. "_What?"_

"The two of you are already so familiar – calling each other by your first names and everything," he said, with the half-mocking smile twitching his lips. "When're the wedding bells to ring, may I ask?" He certainly felt better. She shouldn't have given him so much sherry.

Surprisingly, she didn't blush, didn't stammer, and though her heart began to thump erratically there was no outward sign of it. Had Shinichi been in the room, things would have been wildly different. Instead she frowned and said, "What are you talking about?"

"Your intimacy. With Kudo-san. You two are having an affair, aren't you?" The leer had turned to a more concerned expression, which she ignored.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

His face fell serious. "Oh, don't play the fool. You know fully well you're in love with the man. It's visible. You can tell _me_, you know."

This couldn't go any further – she couldn't allow it. She had decided weeks ago that she wouldn't allow personal feelings intruding into this, and she wouldn't begin now. It would break too many things – it would be having one's guard down only a second in excess, and she'd learnt long ago that being defenceless was the nearest step to having lost. "Listen – there is a very good reason against my loving Shinichi, or his loving me. And I won't tell you anything about it. So drop it."

Akira-san looked disappointed but didn't push it any further, and after a few more minutes he said he'd better go. At the door he turned back. "What if they know I've spit it, and attack me tonight?" he asked nervously.

"Then grab your aggressor's wrists and mark them," Ran said. "That way even if you die we'll be able to get them." He didn't look any relieved.

After he'd (finally) gone, she sat back at her desk and wrote it all down while it was still frehs in her mind. Then she paused and stared at the page, thinking.

Ebihara-san. Had Akira-san been right, and was he really their Poltergeist? – but somehow, this didn't fit in quite right. She couldn't imagine old, fat Ebihara-san creeping in the corridors in his Scottish dressing robe and cackling evilly while he dropped anonymous letters under people's doors. So either he had an accomplice – or those were two completely different cases.

Neither prospect was pleasant.

She felt like she was very close – very, very close to the solution. There was just this little detail that would allow her to understand it all – the one breach, the one little piece of the puzzle that would somehow give sense to everything else, make it form into a logical pattern. It flickered in and out of sight like a swaying ghost, escaping swiftly when she made a grab for it. That was the way Shinichi must have felt, when he'd been leaning against the car door with this bizarre expression…

She was still thinking about it when she prepared herself for her turn in the building. Black clothes. Lamp torch. Shinichi had found the solution on his own… she placed the dossier in a drawer, turned off all the lights, switched her torch on and went out into the corridor. What was it he had understood? What was the little detail he had eventually come across?

'We were simply looking into the matter the wrong way…'

If all it took was a matter of perspective… she turned left then right, the lightray reflecting on startling glass cases.

Briggs' words sprang out in her mind, '_He said not to tell a word, and not to forget to tour the corridors tonight. He said something is liable to happen.'_

Tonight. She checked the rooms she came across, but the doors were either closed or there was no one inside. Empty rooms, richly furnished but deserted. She passed on, and neither cat nor ghost came her way. It was all eerily silent, such as only immense mansions deep in the woods could be; the soft sounds of her footsteps were the only intruding.

'_Don't forget to tour the corridors tonight_.' And for the first time in _years_, he didn't tell her to run and hide. Protection no longer hung between them, and he accepted that like a gentleman. And here, finally, was the trust she had sought all along, away from all notions of gratitude and truth. It was ironical enough – he was busily holding the door for her to get out of his life.

Honesty was one devil of a thing.

And it hurt like hell.

_Don't forget to tour the corridors tonight._ She walked on, opening and closing doors in her wake, inspecting dark passages, jumping a good foot high every time she met her reflection in a mirror, the lightray trailing on it like a flash, losing herself in this labyrinth of a house. Nothing on the second floor. She directed herself toward the staircase and climbed up to the third. There was nothing there; not a sound, not a move, not even a gust of wind. She walked on.

_Something's liable to happen._

Whether it be from these words echoing in her mind or from common, karateka-bred instinct, she sensed the presence behind her and leaped out of reach, a second before the long, cold hands closed around her throat.

Her back slammed hard against a very concrete wall and her torch was snatched away from her numb grip with incredible strength; only shades and dark reflections on the row of windows in front of her. As her eyes accustomed themselves to obscurity, her aggressor came up again from her right, as elusive as a feline, but this time Ran was ready to welcome them.

She dodged the first punch at her temple and aimed a blow at what was supposed to be his shoulder. A cry of pain, and she ducked and made for the nearest corner, knowing there was a switch there and if she reached it and turned it on–

She didn't make it two steps. A leg swept hers and she fell backwards against the wall again – frozen hands closed hard around her throat, cutting all breath short suddenly. An abrupt mist came over her eyes; in a blur, she could hear her aggressor's rasping pants, felt them heat over her face. The hands squeezed.

She gasped; in a daze, she tried kicking but he pushed her easily away. His thumbs buried heavily around her windpipe; she _couldn't breathe…_

She struggled faintly but he pinned her down against the wall – his body was hovering over hers, her legs were threatening to give in and somehow, somehow she thought of Shinichi, his weary face in the gold-reddish glow of the copper fireplace, the blueness of his eyes when he smiled, and the world was spinning in lack of air–

Words sprang up in her mind again – not Shinichi's, not Briggs', but hers, hardly an hour ago–'_Grab your aggressor's wrist and mark them. That way even if you die we'll be able to get them.'_

It was ironical that in the end her words should come down to her; but then again everything in this case had been ironical, from beginning to end.

Her hands clasped around the wrists that choke her and dug. Her nails buried hard until she felt skin piercing, blood trickling. They'll be able to find the man's DNA on her fingers, she thought faintly. She was grasping for air, lungs screaming in need of oxygen, her whole body gone limp and numb – her hands fell, useless, by her sides.

Her legs finally gave in, so that her only support for swaying on her feet were those hands keeping around her throat, keeping her against the wall, keeping strangling her.

A desperate rasp for air – she felt the strong, cold fingers relax a second then tighten again, then the black oblivion on the borders of her sight tilted upside down and she was sinking… sinking.

**-**

**DUN DUN DUN! A cliffie, yeah!**

**-runs into hiding-**

**No, I won't tell you what happens next. I won't. Ran could be dead for all I know. –sticks out tongue and mutters something about Akai­– But I can offer you mournful cookies, if you need them thorough the next two weeks.**

**By the way, since that new 'traffic' option on our personal accounts (what's up with and changing everything around?), I've been able to see that quite a lot of people are reading this. …… Lurkers all around! Where are you people!**

… **nah. Never mind. It makes me quite happy to know that even people over in Timbuktu (which for some reason is my notion of VERY. FAR. AWAY.) are reading and (hopefully) enjoying this. –grins and gives cookies–**

**-runs into hiding once more– uh… see you in two weeks? n–n" **


	12. A Detective's Deduction

A/N: Gosh, did I get bricked on last chapter. –ogles at screen– (butterfly-chan, put that knife away!) still, being a kind soul (and wishing to avoid death threats), I bring you the next instalment of Lawyer's Problem, yes! (but no Gems yet. Writerblock is HELL, and so is Lupin, damn that Maurice Leblanc guy.)

**Yeah. So, finally, the 'YOU'RE THE CULPRIT AHAHAH' chapter. Um. (By the way, to (evil), who dropped off an anonymous review… uh… is your heart better? I hope this will make it fine again :D)**

**Disclaimer: DC is not mine. Nor is Shakespeare (a quote, or two, somewhere).**

**-**

**Chapter 12 – A Detective's Deduction**

**-**

'_In brief, he is a fraud.'_

H.L. Mencken

-

There was light.

No, there wasn't. There was a dark-grey pitch hovering uncertainly in the black, black bliss. And it grew. Faintly, but it grew. And the darkness fled before it, trickling away like glimpses onto something _else_, flickering still at the borders of her consciousness as her eyes cracked open and regained sight again.

She closed them immediately, blinded by so much light in the outward world. The temptation was great to let herself sink back into the dark softness of sleep… but it were many seconds before she opened her eyes a slit, her gaze filtrating through the trembling veil of her eyelashes.

As her eyes accustomed themselves to the light, it morphed and changed blurredly till it appeared there wasn't so much of it after all. The room was dark, and only a heavily-fringed affair was lit on her left, casting a shaded gold onto the nearest corners. Farther ahead, shadows engulfed the lines and shapes. Everything was hazy with drowsy safety…

Her body came back to her then, and hurt all over. Her legs imprisoned under the heavy blankets, her arms lead-like she couldn't move, the sharp pain at the back of her head, like a tightening cramp, the piercing headache around her temples. She drew in a large gulp of air, before she realized she was actually _breathing._

Oxygen flooded freely in, her lungs, fresh and cool, life-full, and it was incredible, being able to breath in and out deeply as she did, being able to feel how good that was. She could still sense the strong, frozen fingers squeezing her throat–she winced, tried to shake her head to wash away pain, but it was too heavy. She let it flop back onto the pillows and tried to think.

Thought n°1–she was in a bed, under what weighted like a ton blankets, without any clothes on but her underwear. The reason for that was obvious, once her mind was back to clear sailing. Her body was damp with swear, and the growing headache felt like she had a fever. Which explained the drowsiness, sort of.

Thought n°2–apart from her, in the room were only Araide and–surprisingly–Sonoko. This either meant her friend had come back earlier than expected, or several days and night had elapsed since her aggression. And she had a thousand questions to ask, she realised.

She tried to speak, but only articulated a chocked gurgle–it was enough, anyway, to call their attention onto her. Sonoko swooped down on the bed and clasped her hand with an anguished wail of 'Oh, _Ran!_ I've been so worried? How are you feeling?' or at least Ran supposed that was what she said, for she'd understood one word out of ten. Her friend was babbling away with tears in her eyes, and she could only squeeze her hand gentle to say she felt good–which was a flat lie–while trying to form syllables in the back of her throat.

Araide seated himself on her left and held her wrist for a while, controlling her pulse with a thin pocket watch upon which Ran absurdly focused. When he let go her hand flopped back lifelessly on the cover. "Well," said he, smiling, "you certainly scared us this time," and extended a hand for a plastic goblet on the nightstand. He filled it with water and dropped… something, a pill or the like, watching it dissolve in it.

Sonoko was still babbling. Ran gathered her strengths and opened her mouth to ask–"What–"

"Here–drink," Araide said, gently easing the goblet nearer to her lips. "It'll do some good to your headache."

Ran drank obediently, thinking, _Headache? How does he know I have a heada–_

_--_

When she woke again a grey light trickled through the curtains and the lamp on her left had been turned off. It was dawn. Dust glistened faintly in the cold rays falling through the thin curtains, and outside an early bird was twittering gleefully, welcoming in the rising sun. It stopped, then started up again. All the world was moving and shifting, and she'd come back to reality just in time to witness that ephemeral moment of grace between night and morning.

Another pillow had been added up behind her head. She straightened up against it slightly, her body no longer tense and heavy–her muscles were stiff, but that should ease off. Probably. Araide's mixture had partly cleared her headache, and her ideas were clearer, more easily classified, at any rate.

She couldn't remember much of her aggression–only glimpses and blows. It would probably return to her–one thing she should never be able to forget, anyway, was the frozen print of those long hands around her throat… she brushed absently her fingertips against the damp skin there; she could almost feel them there.

But she had marked his wrists (or hers; Sakagushi-san certainly was strong enough), dug her nails into them so hard there was no way it could be hidden. With this, and Shinichi's evidence, there was no way the culprit could esca–

Shinichi.

The door opened, on Sonoko. She didn't look inside at first, but turned back to talk to someone outside before she even noticed Ran was awake and sitting, smiling faintly.

"Ran! How're you going?" She came in, in a dash, and Makoto and Araide followed, the latter of whom carefully closed the door.

For a few minutes Ran found herself engulfed first in Sonoko's teary embraces then in Araide's expert checking of her pulse, heartbeat, and tongue. In all this not a single word was intelligible. At length she was grateful to Makoto-kun to push them both away and force a breakfast tray on her lap. "Here you go, Ran-chan. I'd thought you'd be hungry after two days under the weather," which were probably the most sensible words she'd heard in weeks.

She felt ravenous, which was unromantic but logical. It was finally between a plate of buttered toasts and her second cup of coffee that she got her explanation.

"We didn't catch him," Araide confessed sheepishly. "He fled just before we found you–he probably had just turned the corner, and you didn't look like you were breathing, so we preferred staying with you to make sure you didn't–"

"Wait a second," Ran said. "How did you know I was in danger? You weren't supposed to tour the house until at least an hour, and I'm sure I couldn't have screamed…"

"Well, that's curious. Just minutes before I went off after you, Kudo-kun called–" here Ran couldn't miss Sonoko eyeing her warily, "–panicked. He asked where you were, and when I told him you were touring the house he shouted to go find you immediately if we didn't want to find ourselves with a corpse in our hands. So I rang off and went in search of you–and I found you just in time. You were barely breathing, and you stayed in this bed two nights and days–"

"Makoto and I came back yesterday," Sonoko took up. "Araide-san had phoned to say you'd been attacked, so we packed up in a rush and took the first plane back. Kami, I'm so sorry, Ran. We should have come back as soon as Makoto won the competition–we should never have left you in lone charge of this–"

"I wasn't alone," Ran squeezed her hand, smiling. She turned to Araide again. "Doctor–where's Shinichi?"

"Well–he drove back here the night you were aggressed, but he went away again yesterday evening, after Sonoko-chan and Makoto-kun had arrived." Left. "He went to Tokyo–and I'm afraid he'll be bringing back the police. He said he knew who the culprit was–"

"Didn't he leave any message in case I woke up?"

"No. I suppose the police really _is_ necessary this time–there could have been murder done–" Ran was no longer listening. She'd relaxed against her pillows, laying her coffee cup on her lap, and closed her eyes.

He'd left. Once more, without warning, he'd gone away and left her behind, when she was certain that at waking he'd be first by her side. He'd left, backing away like he'd said he would, holding the door open for her to step through. And the perfect, fittest, most reasonable end was this–

"Ran?"

–falling apart quite simply. Without shock. Without tears. And when time had passed again, the memory of it would resemble that of a dream. '_The sweetest sleep, the fairest-boding dreams/that ever entered in a drowsy head…'_

"_Ran?"_ Sonoko's face, close to her own. "You okay?"

"Are you suffering from your headaches again?" Araide asked worriedly on the other side of the bed.

"I–yes. No. I'm fine. When did you say Shinichi would be back?" Sonoko's clutched her shortly; by the look on her face, her best friend wanted to know all about this, but dared not ask. It would have to wait. Ran wouldn't talk about it–it was too early yet.

"By the end of this afternoon," Araide said, looking thoroughly puzzled. "He didn't say–have _you _seen who assaulted you, Ran-chan?"

"No," she said absently. "It was dark, and he or she or whatever was careful to stay in the shade. And they didn't talk, nor did anything to allow me to recognize them," she added, seeing that Araide opened his mouth again. He closed it. She yawned.

"You look… exhausted. You had better rest some more," he said, standing. "We'll come and fetch you when–when the police arrives."

Sonoko and Makoto followed, uncertainly. "Ran," Sonoko said, then stopped. Araide opened the door and left with a smile. At length she spoke. "… are you sure you're okay?"

No. "Yes," she said, eyes half-closed in the growing light of dawn. "I'm just tired."

I'm so tired.

_So am I._

_--_

She drowsed for the best part of the day, wandering listlessly on the frontier between sleep and wake for hours. When she fully came to again, the afternoon was drawing to an end. The light was a darker shade of gold, and the portion of sky she could glimpse through her window was not so clear a blue as she remembered.

In terms of body, she felt much better. Her limbs were still stiff her hell, only a logical result of having remained in almost the same position thirty-six hours through, and the misty headache that used to roll painfully in her mind had by now completely cleared. She was able to _think._

A pullover and jeans had been folded at the foot of the bed. Atop the pile, a note in Sonoko's handwriting said, Kudo-kun and the police have arrived. We won't begin without you. Come down when you think you can.

She slipped limply out of bed and pulled on the clothes. They fitted her like a second skin. When she watched the effect in the looking-glass by the door, what with the clothes and her messy hair and pale face, she felt she looked like a high school student. Back to the past. Maybe that was the necessary path to get rid of it.

When she came down the grand staircase it was to find the whole assembly gathered in the hall. First to notice her and come up was Sonoko, followed closely by Araide and Hikaru-san, both asking after her health.

Megure-keibu met her at the foot of the steps, with a hearty handshake and a delighted, "Aah, Ran-kun! Long time no see! What a beautiful woman you have become–I heard about your aggression. Seems that Kudo-kun and you are still as trouble-magnets as ever," he grinned and gestured at Shinichi, who was standing with a more mature-looking Takagi-keiji at the other end of the hall.

And if she had expected to find him changed she was disappointed. His face was as poker-faced as Conan's had ever been.

Most of the guests came to ask after her during the following half-hour. Only Sakagushi-san kept away, burrowed as she was in conversation with Sato–sorry, Takagi Miwako-keiji, but she smiled at her from afar, and Akira-san was eagerly attentive by her side. He seemed to feel guilty for the aggression.

"It's my fault," he said to her, in a low voice. "If I hadn't told you about the blackmail–"

"Of course not," she patted his arm. "Besides, if anything, I'm alive and safe now. And the culprit will be caught shortly."

He didn't look any better. "You could have died then. I would have been attacked instead if I hadn't spilled it out to you…"

"Don't be a fool," Shinichi's deep voice said from behind them. Ran turned to him, but he didn't return the look. "They still need your money–they wouldn't have killed you. Yet. Besides, there's not a certainty that they and Ran-san's aggressor were the same."

Ran-san.

"Would you mind telling everyone to gather in the drawing-room," he added, and when Akira-san had nodded sheepishly and pulled himself off, turned to her. "Well–" he took her hand, looked at it for a second, then back to her face. "How are you feeling?"

Horrible. I'm fine. Tired. I feel good. I've been better. Not so bad, considering. _I needed you._ Answers butted in her head, but none came into speech.

"I'm okay now," she said, looking away. "So you've found the culprit–haven't you?"

"Yes." He gave her hand a soft squeeze then let it go; it fell back to her side, lifeless. "They're moving. We'd better go in." They walked together to the breakfast table, silent, and parted at the door, Shinichi going to sit in mid-table and Ran at the far left end, along with Sonoko and the Araides. The guests were strewn around the table, daring not glance at the policemen–twenty of them or so–situated every two yards alongside the wall.

Noise reduced, then revolved into silence.

Stall. Ran thought she could hear her blood throbbing in her eardrums as she looked from pale face to pale and scanned the expressions–nervous, patient, irritated, calm, falsely relaxed. Megure-keibu, Takagi-keiji, and Shinichi. He was looking at his hands, carefully folded, oblivious, it seemed, to the outward world. He looked weary and strained.

He must be exhausted, after to-and-fro-ing endlessly between the mansion, going to find proofs, coming back in the dead of the night, going away again, coming back–never, ever getting a wink of sleep.

At length Asama-san spoke. "I take it you've found the culprit among us," was his matter-of-fact assessment, and the tension between them built tighter.

Shinichi looked up from his hands to the vase of daffodils in the middle of the table, right before him. "Yes."

Pause.

"You see, we've all been wrong somewhere in this case. Sonoko-san was wrong in thinking the letters were simply the works of a lunatic. Ran-san was wrong in thinking the dog had to do something in the nighttime–meaning, that something should be fishy about the keys to Kyogoku-san's office. And _I_ was wrong in analysing the culprit's motive like I did–that, by the way, was the greatest error of all. It nearly lost a life.

"We were wrong all along; or, rather, we've been looking into the matter the wrong way. All we had to do was give it a shake and seek another perspective–"

This little speech had the result to make everybody look uncertainly at one another. Oblivious to this, Shinichi went on, in the same empty, monotonous voice, "I had assumed the study was the centre of all–and it was, though not the way I thought. My prejudice also covered our culprit's novelist-schemes to confuse us–"

"What's this all about?" Sonoko whispered to Ran.

"And Then There Were None and The Purloined Letter," Ran whispered back, and it probably didn't help her much, but her attention was on Shinichi only. (Then again, when hadn't it been?)

"–in truth, the culprit manipulated me–us–all the time, and did it well. I have made great mistake, greater than perhaps I would have in some other situation…" a pause here, an infime hesitation, "but I was also right sometimes. I had assumed the man's aim was to stop the study. I'd thought the aggressions on random people were only a way to hide the real motive… and I was right.

"Sakagushi-san was shot. Hikaru-san was assaulted from behind. Ikenami-san was poisoned. Ran-san was strangulated. And every time, the murder attempt failed. _But it was meant to succeed once._

"Of course, we would've had to assume that the culprit had gone too far–that it wasn't meant to kill, but hands had slipped, so to say. I'll have you notice that all his victims were women–and two of them lawyers. You can link this with the fact that Sakagushi-san was one of the most violently aggressed by the anonymous letters… the way I should have done from the start," he added bitterly.

"The tree was to be hidden in the forest–the other crimes were supposed to hide the real, only one, like in those mystery novels the culprit so likes to read. It was the culprit's aim from the start to kill but one. He only intended to kill you, Ran-san." He looked at her for the first time, and in the blue of these eyes she saw something uncertain shift.

Her breath caught. There was a rattle of chairs and sudden racket as everybody started talking all at once–Sonoko's high-pitched shrill on her left, Makoto-kun's graver tones on her right, Akira-san's excited voice further off, Sakagushi-san's grey eyes turning to her, Sato-keiji's hand on her shoulder–and then Asama-san booming above the din, "How is that possible? Ran wasn't even among us when the letters started arriving."

Silence slammed back down.

"It was logical," Shinichi said quietly. "Sonoko-san's been Ran-san's best friend since high school. It was rational enough to assume that under such circumstances and the pressure of the necessary discretion, Sonoko-san would have called for her."

"But the possibility–" began Kenjin-san, "would have been ridiculous. What if it hadn't worked? What if Sonoko-san had called the police–or someone else? What if Ran-san had been too busy, and declined?"

"Then he would have tried some other time, some other place. There would have been other opportunities to succeed." His eyes had revolved back to the daffodils, and the flicker of intellectual excitement she had perceived in the blue had vanished. It then hit her that he mustn't have known all this before he'd left for Tokyo. What he'd told them just now was only what he'd learnt out there.

"Another thing that meddled in my deductions was the second case in this." General sensation. "The culprit was, unknowingly, helped–because I had to disentangle the one from the other, which, by the way, I shouldn't have known so precisely as I do now hadn't it been for Ran-san's lucidity and foresight. I had guessed as much–but I shouldn't have had any evidence if she hadn't immediately noted down everything Kano-kun had just told her."

Ran turned to Akira-san. He had gone uncommonly pale, and dared not look back at those who glanced at him.

Thankfully, Shinichi did not rub it in. He contented himself with a "Reading her notes allowed me to get the final distinction between our two cases," and a dark look in Ebihara-san's direction. Two gorilla-shaped policemen were squarely escorting him.

"Now we come to the important point," Shinichi, who was definitely backtracking, said. "It was our greatest mistake, and it defeated us all along. In fact, that too was a way to hide the real crime… we had reached only a degree of the reasoning. The answer was just a level higher, and no wonder we couldn't reach _that_, as we _were convinced we knew it already."_

"Translater, please," Kenjin-san said. There were several laughs, and the tension broke down a little. Shinichi himself couldn't help an amused smile.

"The 'incident of the dog in the nighttime,'" he added, "is how we came to call the wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office, and a quotation from one of Conan Doyle's most famous mystery novels, the Hound of The Baskervilles. In the book, Sherlock Holmes discovers the victim was running away from the dog–an enormous, fantastical beast–thanks to the _footprints_ he found in the mud."

He paused, and Ran suddenly understood–what was coming, what he was about to show, what it was he had discovered three nights before in the moonlit field. And it was silly, indeed, so simple it became silly.

"The facts we had at our disposition were these," went on Shinichi, who obviously couldn't resist a good drumroll. "First, that there was no known way the culprit could enter the house through the door, since the only key was in Briggs' possession and had never mysteriously disappeared for a few hours; therefore, we were all the more likely to turn our suspicions on the windows.

"Second, the beautiful set of footprints Ran-san found under said windows, and the traces of wet soil on the frame's wood. The culprit evidently hoped to make us believe he had gone through here. However, it had only begun raining _after_ the incident, and it stopped a little after dawn, so if they really had been made _before_, they would have been meticulously washed away. It was nonetheless very intelligent of our man to leave it to our subconscious to make the association.

"You see, he _knew_ we'd made that assumption, and turned, consequently, our attention back onto the door or some secret passageway leading to the office. But what if the culprit _had _really entered through the windows the first time over? What if he _had_ cut a circle out of the glass to get in, and then smashed the pane to hide it, instead to get in first and break the window later like he wanted us to believe? What if the prints of his first passage _had_ been washed away by the rain, and he had come back after dawn to make some more, _not_ to let us think he had gone through there, as he knew we'd see through that?"

A deafening silence followed the end of his sentence. Ran let out a breath, eyes sliding shut. If he was right, then only one person could have done it–but if he didn't have any evidence–

"You see how clever it was from the start," Shinichi went on unperturbed, though the atmosphere had turned to pure vinegar, "each level more transparent and delicately built than the former, constructing higher and higher until it gets so thin it is imperceptible. He was a degree of reasoning higher than we were; he anticipated not only our moves, but also our thoughts."

"But," Sakagushi-san began, "if Briggs locked all windows and doors giving onto the quad–"

"Ah, yes," Shinichi cut in, "and how do you know about that, Sakagushi-san?"

She deadpanned him with the darkest glare. "Must you ask?"

"No," he laughed, the tiniest laugh, "probably not. But you're right. All the doors and windows giving onto the quad had been locked, under Ran-san's request, by Briggs and his faithful company, and there is no way to open them forcefully, none. I tried. In fact, the only way in–or, rather, out–was, and is, Kenjin-san's window."

This was dropped quite casually; it had the effect of a bomb falling through the middle of the table.

The guests took it full in the face, and even when the effects started to wear off they looked somewhat shaken, as though suffering from shellshock. In the thick silence, Shinichi stood up slowly and started walking down the table towards Ran's end. He passed Asama-san's chair, Hikaru-san's.

"Of course I don't have a proof of what I'm saying," he went on. "Somebody else could have hidden in the quad, under the rain, before anyone closed the windows and doors–or come down a rope from a window on a higher floor."

Araide's chair. Makoto-kun's chair. He walked past hers, between the back of it and Sato-keiji, and Ran heard his step, felt his smell, sensed his presence before he was away again.

"But there is one point where you weren't so clever. I expect that exasperated by your urge to kill Ran-san, you didn't think, when you tried to strangle her, that she could easily mark your wrists. Knowing her to be a black-belt karateka, she certainly did."

Sonoko's chair. Akira-san's chair.

"And she must have dug into them so hard there was no way to hide the wounds," Shinichi added. "Which is why you've kept your hands under the tablecloth all along, isn't it, Hiragami-san?"

"Hiragami?" Ran repeated. Shinichi's blue gaze flickered at her.

"Rings a bell?"

"Yes…" dumbfounded, her eyes devoured Kenjin-san's face, seeking a resemblance and–kami–finding it. "He's a murderer I charged a few days ago–"

Half the assembly gasped; it gave a very strange, echoing sound.

"Kenzaki Kenjin's name is Hiragami Shogo," Shinichi said, in a curiously clear, transparent voice. "He was tried nine years ago for the murder of his wife's lover, who had just killed her. It was one of Ran-san's first trials, and one of those which brought her the success she knows today. According to the defence, the deceased had murdered his lover and then turned to her husband, so that the jury would have concluded to simple self-defence and acquitted him, had not an eager young trainee stood up and _proved_ that the woman had been killed at least a day before the murder in question.

"He got out with ten years. Being an exemplary prisoner, he was released after only six. He then went to see a chirurgical surgeon, who can be called up to witness if needed, to change his features slightly – and in three years sprang out of nowhere to become the politician we know.

"From then on I can only conjecture, by my rough guess is this: that finding himself invited to the study in this mansion, he remembered that its owner was best friends with Mouri Ran, and compelled by his desire to revenge, thought it most logical to call her if such a scenario as that of the anonymous letters occurred. As we can see, it worked beautifully.

"The wreckage of Kyogoku-san's office was not only a diversion but also a effect of pride. He wanted to raise his intellect above everybody else's, and never assumed that this snag in our deductions was also the one detail which should allow us to identify him.

"We now come to the aggression on Sakagushi-san. Here again it was all carefully thought-out–the shattered mirror, which led us to suspect Sakagushi-san of having shot herself, had been broken way beforehand. It is situated in a dark, rarely-visited corridor, and it is therefore unlikely that anyone should notice it in the matter of hours, maybe of minutes before the beginning of his plan."

There was a soft rustle of whispers around the table, and Sakagushi-san looked like she would have talked, but Shinichi, passing behind her, laid his hand on her shoulder, and she kept silent.

"I can imagine that Hiragami-san was not altogether happy to find me interfering, and the aggression onto Hikaru-san was also a warning to _me_. Its violence, compared to the shrewdness of his previous ministrations, were meant both to scare and confuse me.

"I suppose–I cannot be certain but I suppose this is when Hiragami-san thought it would be best to hide the real crime in a succession of them, just like one of those Agatha Christie books he himself confessed to me he was fond of. Two murders attempts had already been perpetrated, and it was most logical to await a third. The only condition was that it should more dangerous than the first two, so no one would be surprised when at the fourth attempt there would really be murder done. And he put poison in Ikenami-san's medicine.

"He put in a smallish dose, one that wouldn't kill her–but being no doctor himself he didn't realize that there was also another smallish dose of the same poison–strychnine–medically added. The two doses added up and could have been fatal to Ikenami-san hadn't she been saved just in time.

"Hiragami-san was then in a more perilous position. He had burnt all his boats but one, and he knew I was getting closer to the solution. I guess it must have been a blessing to him to see me go to Tokyo two days later. He could now act freely. He did not wait. The same evening he tried to strangle Ran-san."

His voice was smooth and empty.

"A happy coincidence made that I phoned Araide minutes before that, and made him find Ran-san before anything drastic happened. It was the last confirmation I needed–and the evidence of that is marked on your wrists, Hiragami-san."

He had talked calmly, politely, and having now finished his tour of the table he sat down again, exhaustedly, almost facing Kenjin-san. The rattle of his chair disturbed everyone in their trance-like silence, unperturbed again till Akira-san dared speak up.

"Ken-kun!" he exclaimed, leaning forward with a sort of reluctance in his stance. "Are you going to let them accuse you without protesting? Are you not going to speak? Are you not going to deny?"

There was a pause. Kenjin-san had bowed his head, and when he looked back up Ran recognized, without the shadow of a doubt, the man she had stared at in the dock nine years before. It appeared incredible that she should not have known him before.

Kenjin-san's first words made a strong impression–like a blowing concussion–on everyone in general and Akira-san in general. "You are _so_ young," he said, way too quietly than was healthy.

"You cannot understand feelings such as grief, or revenge–or love," he added viciously. "I _loved_ my wife, loved her more than any of you can probably imagine, loved her passionately, loved her to devotion–and _he_ killed her. So I killed _him_. It was _justice_," he snarled.

He pointed at Ran, face distorting in a weird, ridiculously terrifying grimace of such hate Ran winced. She could almost feel the cold, cold fingers close around her throat again. "And this woman–this_ woman_, she punished me for being just. I am kinder. I punished her for being unjust. Will any of you accuse me now?"

Akira-san breathed out loudly and sat back in his chair with a _thump_. There were quavering glances exchanged between the guests, and when Ran looked up at Megure-keibu, who'd moved from behind Shinichi to behind Kenjin-san, his face was closed.

"You dare not!" Kenjin–no, Hiragami spat. "You dare not accuse me! I wish someone would kill her. I wish _I_ had. But _you–"_ he glared at Shinichi, who was staring at the daffodils again, "you prevented me from accomplishing my mission. This is _your_ fault. I would have killed her, and gotten out with it, hadn't it been for you!"

Ran closed her eyes, knowing there was no way to stop this. Hiragami would speak his heart out, and Shinichi wouldn't even try and interrupt. Just as she thought this, however, Sakagushi-san's frozen voice broke in with, "I am surprised. You killed once and got away with it, and you decided to murder someone_ else?"_

"I–" for the first time, Hiragami staggered. "I… loved my wife. Adored her. But she died, and I–I decided to kill this _woman_, for her to understand what it's like to grieve, and to fear, and to know you're _done for…"_

"Yes," Shinichi said, quietly, "and you didn't think that some people love Ran, just as you loved your wife."

Ran looked at him.

This seemed to impress much on Hiragami. He burst in bitter, joyless–horrible laughter. "Ah, yes, of course," he told Ran, "_your_ ending is happier than mine, isn't it? You're won everything–even a happily ever after with your detective boyfriend, am I right. I know people like you–you use those around you, and then you ditch them when they can't be of use anymore. You're _disgusting,_ that's what you are. How long is this one going to last? How long till you dump _him_, too?"

"–that's quite enough of this, now," Megure-keibu said, closing an iron grip around the man's wrists. "I must now warn you that everything you say can be used against you at your trial–"

Hiragami Shogo let himself be led away without resistance, and all the guests stood and filed out into the hall, eager to see more like animals half-disgusted and half-fascinated. Ran paused at the door, leaning against it to keep on her feet. She was shuddering. Nausea gripped at her throat like a weapon.

"Ran?" Shinichi called, pushing past pressing backs and stepping closer. "Are you okay?"

_I feel sick_. "I'll be alright. Is this–this man–do I have to…" oh god. She couldn't even make complete, rational sentences.

"He'll be taken down to Tokyo tonight. Ran–" he stopped, and looking up in his face she stared into an empty mask, taking her breath away. Her eyes were burning red-hot, and _How long till you dump_ him_ too_ echoed relentlessly in her mind. "You look exhausted. You'd best go back up. I'll take care of the police and the press if you'd rather."

She nodded bleakly. "I'd rather."

"And–I'll want to talk to you later. Will you wait up?"

_I don't need this_, she thought lamely. "Sure."

He smiled and gave her hand a squeeze before pushing his way back to the entrance and Megure-keibu. Stopping in mid-staircase on her way back to the room, Ran contemplated this: his half-shaded figure in the frame of the wide open double door, features hardly discernible, and behind the darkening gold of dusk.

--

Whoo! What a chapter. (Longest in this fic, I think.) Quite a lot of answers here, aren't there? Not all of them, though. About two-thirds of the whole plot or thereabouts–and Shinichi actually made a mistake in this. Mwahaha.

**Next chapter should be loads of fluff and angst all rolled up to the size of a cookie. (Speaking of which… -grins and holds out plate-) It should be up by December 10****th****-15****th****-ish. And the last chapter for Christmas. (And then another fic. And another. But that's a secret.)**


	13. A Detective's Confession

A/N: So… the much-awaited chapter at last. (God, we're really getting to the end here. When did I begin this again? And what'll I do when I'm done? Well, I do know, actually… -stares off in the distance-)

**Chappie dedicated, with my thanks and love and cookies, to ****Chocolaty Taste,****ami-chan****, and ****butterfly-chan**** (as ever) for their beautiful, ten-pages-long reviews. You made my days, girls… and frankly, I laughed so much.**

**Disclaimer–naaaaahhhhhh-uuuuuuuhhhhh. –fiercely attacks poor, innocent cookie–**

**-**

**A Detective's Confession**

**-**

_Journeys end in lovers meeting._

William Shakespeare

-

The sun had set. The golds and reds of dusk had subsided, and a wide, still-clear bleu spread over the sky, striped with the black clouds that stretched over it like smoke shadows. Likewise, the landscape below was shaded in blue and black–and grey, and green where woods coated the hills. Leaning on her balcony, the window still open in her back, Ran watched it all in silence.

Below the last of police cars and journalists had finally gone away with what they wanted, and the few remaining guests had moved back inside.

The air was cool, almost cold; sounds had reduced to the gentlest rustle of leaves and branches, and birds lightly responding to one another. The world, after the constant excitement of the day, was now peaceful and pure, and it was difficult to imagine figures draped in shadows crawling down passages, when time had stilled to the endless darkening of shades following twilight.

Her body was calm and relaxed, as though taking a long, deep breath after holding it in so long. But her mind was already occupied elsewhere; she could imagine the soft rap on the door, the slow turning of the handle, the footsteps easing in…

When Shinichi eventually knocked, he had to do it twice before she turned and called to come in. She didn't leave the balcony–she wouldn't come forward to him, wouldn't grant him that pleasure. The culprit was found and now arrested, the case was closed, the truce it had settled between had met its deadline: now they had only their own petty battle to fight.

Shinichi came in slowly, showing no surprise at finding her on the far other side of the room, behind the barricades of her window, the balcony, the night. He went straight in, and leant likewise against the stone parapet. Ran didn't speak. Leave it to him to make the first move.

"Megure-keibu and his men took him down to Tokyo," he said, after a minute's silence. "The trial should take place in a few weeks. He won't be able to harm you again."

It wasn't even a blow; just a test of her feelings–to know what grounds she stood on, whether or not they were solid.

"I'll get him a good lawyer for the defence," she said slowly, not turning her eyes at him. "Someone competent." A mild step forwards before the actual assault. "Someone who can help him out.

His sounded truly shocked in his answer. "Ran, this man tried to kill you!" and she fancied she heard the ram of swords finally, finally clashing together as she faced him, eyes meeting eyes and defying.

"I know. But if he simply gets some more years of prison, his hatred towards lawyers will never alter. He'll only try and attack the man who charged him like I did nine years ago, and this time there might really be murder done. He's got to be medically helped out of this, not continually incarcerated. The man's deranged."

She saw acceptance in the blue eyes, and averted hers quickly before he could read in them more than she had in his. But after a minute she knew her defences mustn't be so impenetrable as she hoped. "You don't have to feel guilty over this, you know. That's the true reason, isn't it?–one of them, anyway. You're feeling responsible over what happened here?"

She hesitated between denying everything and accepting his statement as truth, then compromised, "If I hadn't charged him so heavily nine years ago–"

"You couldn't know," Shinichi, always the rational mind, objected. He was never going to defeat her with arguments like this. "Besides, he was a murderer. He was lucky to get out with only nine years–six, in the end."

Her shield had been assaulted in two places, but she kept on, head-on. "If I hadn't accepted to help Sonoko with this case, none of this would have happened. Sakagushi-san, Ikenami-san. Hikaru-san, and her a pregnant woman, too. And I couldn't move the smallest finger to help–"

"You couldn't have _known_," Shinichi persisted, pushing her hard against her own fortifications. "If none of you had been aggressed, we might never have caught him anyway–if he hadn't tried to kill you two days ago, we might never have had any evidence of his being our man."

"Yes, I know. But it's just that–although he was mental and defended some kind of crazy justice, he–it was his love for his wife which triggered all this. I saw her photograph, you know–even went to see her body at the morgue, nine years back. She was–very beautiful. The calculating kind. She cheated on her husband the whole time, only to be killed by her lover, and he–loved her all along. He…"

'_I know people like you. You use those around you and then ditch them away when they can't help anymore.'_

"I just feel sick."

She thought she had shut him up, but after the necessary while he said–"It wasn't his love for his life that provoked his need for killing, whichever way his lawyer may have put it nine years ago. He wanted to revenge. All along he was cheated on and deceived. I should say he projected on you all the grievance he felt against his beloved wife. You needn't feel guilty, Ran."

He marked a hesitation. "Love is a very different thing," he said.

"… how can you know?" Ran said, lips quivering numb around the weight of the words.

"Because–" he broke off, and his eyes were so blue in the pending darkness falling all about them she couldn't tear away from him. "Because I've loved you ever since I'm fifteen."

It was a low blow and it affected her as such–like a kick in the plexus with cuts all breath short, and kept her silent until he continued, more slowly and steadily, "Actually, maybe sooner than that–fifteen's the oldest I remember of _knowing_ I loved you. Before that, I–" a thin smile here, as though remembering something– "was probably too young to realize my feelings, but there were there all along."

These was a series of rapid but efficient blows and she had to clutch onto the parapet to avoid falling, to avoid giving in. She couldn't breathe anyway, gasping for air did nothing to it. Shinichi glanced at her, expecting her to talk, but she shunned her eyes away.

"The Conan days–were probably the worst and the best I spent. Being so close to you was something I'd never imagined but–gosh, I'm sorry, Ran. I've said it before, and I'll say it again… but it's ten-years-old, and it was done for the best."

Ran swallowed.

"Parting with you was the most difficult part. I'd never thought it would be so painful–I hadn't realized what a hole you would create when you were gone. What a day that was–the way you looked at me then…" he slid the back of his hand down her cheek and she nearly jumped right out of her skin. She turned to him, ready to bite, but oh that blue again… and she was unable to move, a poor fighter indeed if he could disarm her so easily.

"So beautiful…"

The fingers strayed on her skin gently, sliding to the stubborn curves of her mouth.

"The taste of your lips…" His breath was just above hers now, and deep inside Ran's forces were faltering. It would be so easy to let him… to let him…

He moved away. His presence lifted like a heavy weight, and suddenly she realized how foolish she was. She was reacting like a common schoolgirl–but, damn it! she was no longer eighteen. She was twenty-eight, a renowned lawyer–it wouldn't do to lose oneself that way. She was _stronger_ than that. She'd face him, and fight him–and fall, maybe, but never give in.

"I'm sorry," he said again, turning back to her guiltily. "I didn't mean to hurt you just now."

"Didn't mean to _hurt_ me?" repeated Ran disbelievingly. His mouth curled in what could have been a snarl and could have been a self-deprecating smile.

"I know." He was silent. "After we parted–after I graduated, I was already known as a teenage detective. It didn't take me too long to become what–or who–I am now. Not long enough," he said, voice bitter as hard cider. "I fell down into routine. Solving cases, dealing with the police, dealing with the lawyers–never you, because you took care never to accept any case having to do with _me_," it wasn't a judgement, just a statement, "going home, drinking to forget, spending the night with women I did not like. It wasn't difficult. It was all the easier to live this life that I didn't have to confront with you–with my feelings–with my weaknesses."

He looked at her. She didn't look back–she wouldn't, couldn't grant him that. It would be giving him an opportunity to read into her very soul.

"Ten years. And then I received your letter." A pause in the assault–he was looking for some weak flank, she knew, the Achilles' heel, her lone refuge. "Curiously, it didn't affect me as one would think–less shellshock than resignation–but seeing you did. Being with you, speaking to you–it was having my life back."

"Shinichi–"

She mentioned at her to keep silent–for the time being, at least. "Those weeks with you made me forget myself. They reached their solace that day we left, after Ikenami-san was poisoned–I wanted a last happy memory with you, and I sure got it. It was the happiest I felt in years." He was smiling softly, deep in remembrance, and she was assaulted by memories–Conan smiling the same smile, the same softness at the corners of his eyes.

"The next day I went to Tokyo, and when I realized who Kenjin was­–really is, I also understood what his real objective was. I'd thought he'd wanted to stop the study, whatever it was–"

Yes, the study–that, _that _hadn't been explained. Sonoko…

"–killing _you_. I told Araide to go straight after you and drove back like a shot, terrified at the idea that I could lose you, wishing like a fool that for once I had been wrong in my deductions–until at arriving I found Suzuki on location, astonished to see me, found my conclusions right from beginning to end, found _you_ nearly dead because of my own careless fault."

Even down, shield broken in numerous parts, Ran found the strength to strike back. "I'm not dead," she protested. "I'm feeling okay, just tired. Araide… and you… both saved my life." Damn.

He turned to her, and in the blue there was such tenderness, such sad, sad sorrow she felt maybe the battle wasn't over yet–maybe she hadn't completely lost. "I know," he said. "But I'm losing you anyways."

And then she knew it was far, far too late, and he had taken over everything. Everything he had once owned, everything she'd succeeded in tearing back to her in ten long, heavy years, like a thief–he had won all back in a couple of weeks, without any apparent difficulty.

"It's been ironical, those weeks," he was saying, starting to laugh without the slightest trace of amusement, without joy. "I've been busy sewing off my own branch… I was losing you either way–honest or not." There he stopped. "But I don't regret, just as I don't, can't regret being Conan once. It taught one lesson to stupid, arrogant, proud child I was–and I'd thought I'd grown out of it by now. It was a hard lesson."

"Baka," Ran murmured. She didn't seem able to say anything else, and after a second he took her hand in his with a smile. (And it was the final blow, the one which pierced straight through her heart.)

"You don't have to say anything yet. You don't have to say anything at all, if you don't want to. I'll understand. I'm not stupid–not anymore, and not that much. I just want you to know." His fingers pressed hers gently. "You're the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Shin–"

"Goodnight." He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, and was gone.

–so the battle had ended. She had won. In a few minutes, a few words–one last kiss–he had given her everything he had taken from her; accepted it as her own property. The battlefield was void of any fighter, and as she leant back against the stone, icy-cold parapet, trying to fight back tears, she found herself with as much or more than she had had at the beginning.

The battle was over. And she'd lost nothing–nothing, except her heart in her chest, the one thing that meant everything.

He'd taken it away with him.

-

It was a restless night. Ran tossed and turned indefinitely in her bed, sleep keeping resolutely at bay, Shinichi's words circling in her mind like mockingbirds, round and round and round again…

'_Sayonara, Ran.'_

'_It's _past_, Ran. Can we leave it all there?'_

'_I'm losing you either way…'_

Well, Ran thought, staring at the ceiling with her arms tucked behind her pillow, if he thinks he'll just get at me with this, he's damn well mistaken….how does he think I lived up through ten years….consequences of one's actions be damned….I don't regret anything. I've forgotten how….it doesn't do to regret….Like having one's head bashed in….I won't be blind, anyway….or oblivious….nothing hurts like being oblivious….ten years…. Why did he accept the case anyway?

'_I can call someone else to take care of this matter.'_ I should have said yes….it would have spared me that….blast the man! He must have known honesty hurt like hell…

'_I knew you would come up with this sometime or other. You wouldn't leave it all buried in the past, would you?'_

Well, no, I can't….gratitude…. oh, damn…I don't _want_ to be grateful….Did it for me… yeah, right….that's hypocrisy, my lad….I can't be grateful to you if you're hypocritical….if you're handing it all to me freely. Why did he come at all….why didn't I say yes….opposite forces….that only way to hang on… even if it hurts? Oh, I don't know… I don't _know_ anything… I don't want to know anything. Damn it! Can't I sleep?

It would be so easy to sleep… "To sleep, no more, and, by a sleep to say we end…" Damn…

'_We'll find the culprit, we'll catch him, and be done with it–then I'll take you out for coffee and… back away from your life.'_

'_I'm busy sewing off my own branch…'_

Suits him well….hope he falls down hard….You were honest, Shinichi, weren't you? Of all the beastly things, honesty is the worst….losing you either way… what's the point… it was a lose-lose situation from the start, so what's the point….hanging on…for the sake of what? … honesty… but it hurts. It's the very thing that hurts… we could hurt each other so much…

'_You didn't think that some people love Ran, just like you loved your wife.'_

'_You use those around you, and then you ditch them away when they can't help anymore… How long is this one's going to last? How long before you ditch _him_ away, too?'_

Can't let him believe that…. I never asked for anything…. Came my way….ready to clutch onto anything to hold on. I can't help it….in perpetual fall….and what am I supposed to do about it? If he thinks I'm going to accept his protection…. I'm strong enough as it is….but something's rotten. Something's rotten….I can't seem to be able to get rid of Shakespeare….Of all the tragic plays… everybody dies in the end. Everybody d–

'_Goodnight.'_

Shinichi… the name escaped her lips, and fear was there, unexpected, sudden, foolish, absurd fear as a thousand questions fell over in her mind–what if Hiragami-san had had an accomplice, after all? What if he attacked Shinichi? What if he killed him? What if she never got another chance to see–to speak–to feel with him again… Shinichi…

It was stupid fear–the kind which grasps your insides at night, twists them into knots, lifts onto your chest, grips at your throat. Tears began to run down her cheeks and she wiped them senselessly before fear built up so high, so tensely, so heavily it erased all thought and she found herself stumbling out of bed, wrenching the door open, out into the corridor already. Shinichi's name echoed in and out of her mind, a little voice that kept murmuring words she wouldn't hear…

A turn, a step. She didn't care about her light nightgown or bare feet, though she was shuddering, and she ran through the corridors like a hurried ghost, wishing and praying and wishing and praying, Kami-sama please let him be safe let me be on time…

A turn, a step. Shinichi's voice. Shinichi's words… _I've so loved you ever since I'm fifteen. So. This is goodbye? You're the best thing that ever happened to me. Goodnight._

_Goodnight._

A turn, a step. There was light under his door. But it meant nothing; it never meant anything; the murderer may be slaying him right now, she couldn't turn away, not anymore–and she was bursting in, slamming the door open.

Shinichi was working at the light of his desklamp. He stood up violently at her so abrupt entrance, and she caught a shocked glimpse of blue and a strangled _Ran?_ before she ran straight into his arms; nose in his chest and hands grasping at the fabric of his shirt.

And she was babbling, stammering words irrepressibly–"Shinichi–Shinichi–you're safe–you're alright–you're not dead–I was so–I thought… I thought you were dead–my god! I love you so much–I love you–please don't die on me now…"

"Shh…" he hugged her, gently, as thought she were made of glass. Her trembling body was held closer and closer to his, his hands soothing her back and entangling with her loose hair. "It's okay, Ran, I'm here, don't worry, don't worry…" He moved slowly to close the door, and she followed him, gripping onto him for absurd fear to let go. "C'mon, sit down," he murmured, leading her toward the bed. "Sit down and tell me what's going on."

She sat, blind and deaf to everything that wasn't him, taking in all the little details her senses could catch that said he was alive, he was with her, his warmth and his touch and his voice and his hands… her eyes filled and she slid both arms around him, sobbing in his shirt.

After a second he held her close and caressed her hair gently–so gently it wasn't difficult to lose herself to that sensation.

At length–but all notions of time had gone west a long time ago–sobs thinned out and calmed, shoulders stopped quivering, tears cleared. She relaxed, and as sensations and senses returned to her she suddenly felt very foolish with herself.

Silly indeed to come and make a row of crying in Shinichi's shirt because of some absurd, childish fears!

"Feeling better?" Shinichi murmured in her ear, and his voice was so low and tender she shuddered. But she nodded; and her hands sliding down from behind his neck, she disentangled herself from his lap. He let go regretfully. "You must think I'm stupid," she said in a breath.

He was silent for a moment. "I don't," he replied, the back of his hand come to stroke her cheek in what was maybe an involuntary gesture. "What's happened?"

"I–I thought Hiragami-san had an accomplice," she confessed. "I imagined he'd come after you–he'd go kill you–I had to protect you–oh, this is stupid," and made to stand towards the door. His hand closed around her wrist, and pulled her back.

"Ran…"

She bit the inside of her lower lip, refusing to meet his eyes–his wonderful blue eyes… which would read into hers what she wanted most to conceal. He turned her head to him, holding her close, the warmth of his hands on her bare forearms almost painful in their gentleness. They were ten years in the past all over again, as embarrassed and awkward, and she could still sense the feel and the taste of his lips against hers, as acutely as though he'd just kissed her.

"Ran." (Tone firm, this time, she couldn't escape.)

She looked at him. And she knew she could still back away honourably, she could go away _now_, walk out and he wouldn't detain her. She could still decide not to lose. He looked–weary, strained, all masks and defences down, like barricades only she, for some reason, had the power to strip him of.

"Shinichi?"

But she had already lost, and she already knew it. She had lost to him long ago. The day he'd come back into her life–she'd lost and won everything that mattered to be lost and won, and so had he. His fingers were entangling in her hair again–

–she let herself be drawn in that irresistible, terrifying embrace again, and finished off that ten-years-old kiss.

-

**-for some reason, is completely ashamed by the fluff- damnit, it's all ****katie-chan****'s fault. Kirby infected my muse, I swear… they're plotting something sinister… something about heart-wrenching fluff and pink balloons and walking cookies–and anyway I can't write smex to save my life. Use your imaginations. -hinders away-**

**By the way, here's my Christmas announcement. I've said it in Gems before, but I figured I might as well say it here… consider this my Christmas present to you all–give me a prompt, and I'll write a drabble for it. Like, anything. A few words. The title of a song you like, and I'll go look up the lyrics. A line out of a book. Something you'd like to see written… AU, canon, Christmas-related? Just ask. And really, anyone can ask.**

**I'll post the bunch on Christmas Eve. By then, I'll have updated (and finished, my god) this story. (I hope.) Till then. -holds out santa-shaped cookies-**

**Finals beginning today. Wish me luck…**


	14. Clear As Day

A/N: Well, gents, 'tis the end at last. After last chapter's fluffy conclusion, I thought it'd be nice to come back to some last deduction of this case, ne? One thing I liked writing in this story was that Ran was the detective from the beginning, not Shinichi, and I figured it was only fair to let her close the case.

Disclaimer–I'm not Japanese. Therefore, I cannot be a mangaka. Therefore, I'm not Gosho Aoyama-sensei. Therefore, I don't own DC. Therefore, I don't make any money with this fic. QED. xD

**-**

**Clear As Day**

**-**

'_You can't propose till after you've solved the mystery. That's a law, in detective novels.'_

Connie Willis

-

The morning after came as mornings after go–sunlit and saccharine-sweet until more essential desires forced themselves upon them. Briggs, it seemed, was omniscient; for when Shinichi opened the bedroom door to go fetch some breakfast he found a two-plate tray waiting just outside the threshold.

"He must have calculated to the second the moment when we'd start being hungry," he commented, carrying the tray back to the bed where Ran was busily arranging the covers. "The coffee is hot, and the milk's cool."

Ran smiled and patted the empty pillow beside hers. "He does that."

He settled down, handing her the tray to avoid breaking anything. "So he does. This is reassuring." He shook his head, laughing. "Even after a day of revelations, and despite all the romanticism of last night, the heroes are still feeling humanely ravenous in the morning."

"Romanticism," Ran repeated disbelievingly. "All I can recall is you breaking all my barricades and pushing me against my last fortresses with your infectious love declarations. And making me panic in the middle of the night."

"It was necessary."

"It was grossly unfair."

"Well, it led us to here and now, didn't it?"

She looked over at him–relaxed and naked from the waist up, head resting against the pillow and tilted just _so_, with a smile twitching his lips and a bowl of coffee between his hands, a marmalade-coated toast resting on the tray on his lap–and away. "… yeah."

"Aww, Ran. Look at me." His voice was laughing, and when she reluctantly turned back he swiftly moved to kiss her–and he tasted like oranges and coffee and something burning and peaceful, and she should be pushing him away and the tray was falling over, but.

In the end they did manage to catch the tray back before it toppled off the bed and onto the carpet, and though Shinichi was laughing like some madman and tried to spoon-feed her toast and cereal, it was a good breakfast. The sunlight was slanted against the curtains, and the room seemed to bathe in some swaying gold sea, and it should have told her much about the time and the day and _good lord we should get up_, but it didn't.

"You know what's strange," she said later, completely out of the blue, while he was happily gone into kissing at her collarbone.

"Hmm'?"

"This." She took his head between her hands and lifted it to hers, blue eyes meeting blue and locking there and to the stray smile, the slow upturn of his lips. "Us. If there hadn't been a study in Sonoko's house, Hiragami-san would never have thought of attacking me here. If he hadn't started this whole business, Sonoko would never have called for me, nor I for you. If Hiragami-san hadn't attempted to kill me, we wouldn't be here."

He blinked, and settled more comfortably, elbows on each side of her. "True," he said, frowning. "So what's your point? This is all a big coincidence?"

She knew the words were wrong as soon as they'd escaped his mouth. "No. I'm just saying it's–strange."

He laughed softly, and lifted a hand. "I swear, Ran, you're becoming more mystery-obsessed than I am. I guess you're really taking after both your parents after all–Eri-baasan in the lawyer side and Occhan in the–"

"Hey, be careful what you say here," she swatted at him. "There is _no_ becoming more mystery-obsessed than you are, you nerd. Proof is, you didn't even decline when it was I who called you here." She cocked her head at him, smile softening into something else. "Why did you really?"

He was silent for a moment. "… Good question. I think at the time I thought a case was a case and I couldn't very well be called professional if I couldn't handle it with personal feelings getting involved–and I guess there must have been truth in that. But God, Ran, how I wanted to see you."

She frowned at him, fingers grazing against his cheekbone. She had felt it too–the professional side of the matter, the urge to see more and more and more of him every day, as every day passed–but hearing him say it gave her the­... feeling. What. That something was wrong. That it couldn't have been–that there was no way it could all have been–coincidence that they should have met again, here, now, after so many years, so many words.

'… _is it worth calling for the police–because that's precisely what I want to avoid. Or some paid detective?'_

Who had said that again?

"Ran?" Shinichi said, covering her hand with his own on his cheek. "Is everything alright?" and she hummed in response, trying to catch at the feel–the sensation of that knowledge just escaping. It was that first day in the mansion, and–

'_Do understand, Ran–this cannot go on.'_

Sonoko. Sonoko that first day when she had showed her the cards and the thin folder, trying to convince her there was need for some private detective, there was absolute interdiction in calling the police, it was better if she looked into it herself.

'_Why, it's Mouri Ran-chan! Have you come to visit Sonoko-chan, or do you intend to investigate out local mystery?' _Araide, the same day, and– _'that lady here demands to know what exactly we are here for. Do you have an idea, by any chance?' 'Not in the least.' _Akira-san and Kenjin–no Hiragami-san, in the evening. Sakagushi-san. _'I think you ought to be very careful, Mouri-san.'_

'_It's your decision if you had rather endanger your lives in lieu of your study. What is it all about anyway?'_

Herself, after the wreckage of Makoto-kun's office–and there had been no answer.

'_They all seem to have gathered here under circumstances entirely coincidental – they never talk of anything concerning a work of any kind – their study is making no sense at all. If there is a study, that is'_

'_Have you ever witnessed something that makes you think there isn't one?'_

'_All the time. Everyday.'_

'_Then there probably is one.'_

Shinichi and her, that first day he'd arrived, and things were lightful and bright, like a black fabric suddenly lifting to reveal–to reveal–

Asama-san, the day after Sakagushi-san was shot. _'I suggest we call for Kudo Shinichi.'_

They wouldn't have dared.

"Ran?" Shinichi sounded genuinely concerned by now, and even more so when she scrambled away and out of bed, groping wildly for clothes. "Ran–_what the hell–?"_

"I–I've got to ask Sonoko something," she gasped, pulling on a pair of his jeans–she couldn't very well go out in her nightgown, not when the sun told her it was already so late, and _oh god if she was right Sonoko was going to _pay_ for this._

She grabbed an overlarge shirt and slipped into it, then bending quickly to kiss him. "Stay here. I'll be right back. Love you," and nearly ran out of the room, trying to order on her dishevelled locks. She was barefoot, but her room was on the far other side of the floor, and she needed to see Sonoko as soon as possible.

"Aah–Briggs, please," she called out to him, meeting him by the staircase. "I'm looking for Sonoko. Do you know–have you seen her?"

"Suzuki-sama is in the library," he responded, and then gave her bare feet a critical glance. "Do you wish for me to bring you a pair of shoes while you meet her there, Mouri-san?"

"Yes, please," she called over her shoulder, already fast on her way. The library door was ajar, and she burst through it noisily, startling Hikaru-san half to death and Sonoko into gasping her heart out.

"Sonoko," she panted. "You didn't–you haven't dared–"

"Ran–"

"Ran-kun, what is the–" Megure-keibu cut off, and she suddenly felt strongly Shinichi's clothes upon her skin, far too large and way recognisable for someone who had known them all their lives. Never mind. She went on heedlessly.

"Sonoko, _please_ tell me the study wasn't all a prank."

Sonoko looked sheepish.

"Oh, my god," Ran breathed. "It was? All this? the aggressions? Hiragami-san?" She still felt the cold, cold fingers around her throat if she thought about it–there was no way, no way this could all have been a, a, a matchmaker's joke…

"No_," _Araide said suddenly, rejecting the mere idea. "It wasn't."

"Yes, it was," Sonoko said, still sheepish-looking. Ran glared at her. "But Hiragami-san–well, Kenjin-san he was at the time, I would never have thought–if I had known, I never would have–it was all for your sake, Ran," she finished lamely. "Kudo-kun–"

"–was none of your business," Ran hissed, blistering. "It had been _ten_ years–"

"I just wanted you two to have another chance at this!"

"You _could_ have arranged a blind date or something," Ran snapped, and just as abruptly felt much, much too tired to go on arguing. "I… you didn't have to go to such lengths. Hiragami-san endangered other people than I–Hikaru-san, Sakagushi-san–"

"Well, actually he didn't aggress me really," Sakagushi-san interjected. Her tone was casual, but when Ran looked over her eyes weren't. They were serious and calculating, sizing her up, weighing up the opportunities, estimating possibilities.

"So you did shoot yourself," she said wearily. "The mirror–"

"–was a risky try," Sakagushi-san admitted. "But it was worth it. It worked completely. Even Kudo-kun was fooled."

"You are _not_ meaning that you shot yourself because you wanted to assist Sonoko's matchmaking scheme," Ran said sullenly.

"I didn't really. I've had my eye on you for a long time, Ran-san. Your mother is an old friend of mine, and after she retired she asked me to help you up. I owed her one," she added, as amusedly as her deadpan voice allowed her to. "It was a good opportunity to check on your capacity and see if you deserved your mother's trust."

"So you shot yourself simply to see if I could solve this case," Ran said, as disbelievingly as though Sakagushi-san had just tranquilly announced she was looking forward to marrying Takagi-keiji. "… you're crazy."

"Nobody ever said lawyers weren't," Sakagushi-san replied peacefully.

Ran swirled back on Hikaru-san. "But _your_ aggression wasn't faked."

She shook her head decisively. "No. But–"

"Our guess is this," Megure-keibu interpolated. "When Sonoko-chan called me back this morning, it was to tell me what their scheme stood as. The case of the anonymous letters was faked at the start–each guest was to make their own and present them as though they had found them, but each was also supposed to create an incident that would hint at a dangerous maniac on the loose. The main point was that no guest was in the confidence of the others, so none ever knew who had done what. That was, if I understand well, to avoid any slip-ups when you came to interrogate them."

He glanced at Sonoko, who inclined her head. "The short-term objective was to create such an incident that would entice you into calling for Kudo-kun. The long-term was to create such a case that would draw you closer together and provide for some, err… _moments._"

Ran glared at her some more. "… right." She pondered on it. "So the faked aggression on Sakagushi-san was supposed to be that trigger to calling Shinichi–it was, actually," she said. "But the letters–and the wreckage of Makoto-kun's office occurred before Sakagushi-san shot her own shoulder."

"Well, you see, we thought it was one of the other guests' idea of a remarkable incident," Asama-san said from his seated position by the door. She had had her back turned to him, and he'd been so quiet she hadn't even noticed him. "Of course it struck us as… violent and perhaps unnecessary, but nowhere near dangerous. The number of letters, however–letters we didn't make ourselves, letters we really found–increased over the following week, and when Hikaru-san was aggressed, we understood something was off-tune. No one in their right mind would think of endangering a pregnant woman for the mere purpose of matchmaking."

Ran looked at his grim expression, and recalled how all the guests had been flustered and panicked by the tale the day after the aggression, and nodded bleakly.

"But _you_ had noticed something was not right," she said, to Sakagushi-san. "That night I arrived­–you showed me all the letters you had received. Some of them you must have made yourself, but others were the ones Hiragami-san had sent you, right?" (She could still remember her surprise at the number of letters, Sakagushi-san's grim face in the glow of the fireplace.)

The older lawyer frowned. "… indeed. I thought something was suspicious at the time. I would, however, never have suspected what happened next."

"… so what you are trying to tell me is," Ran said, "that you all–_all_ the guests, without exception–were called upon by Sonoko for this? for matching me and Shinichi together?" The scheme sounded far-fetched and alien to her ears, but then again, this was _Sonoko._

She glanced at Araide and his wife, and Sakagushi-san, standing next to them. "The three of you I can understand, and Asama-san also, I suppose, as I suppose you know my mother too. But Akira-san? Kenjin-san? _Ebihara-san?"_

"Kenjin-san I asked myself," Sonoko said, still sheepishly. "Well–Hiragami-san he is really. Ebihara-san–well, as he is an industrialist, I thought it'd help the serious-looking side of the study. I figured I might as well ask him–I thought he'd say no, but he accepted immediately."

"Because this was the perfect setting for that blackmail scheme of his," Ran said thoughtfully. "And _he_ called Akira-san here, I suppose."

"Yes–he acted very helpfully at the time, saying we might as well invite Akira-san, he was a young man whom the matchmaking, mystery-making scheme was likely to amuse much. Now I see his purpose in doing that, of course," she added, chagrined, "–had I not had this idea in the first place, we would have avoided both the blackmail and the murder attempts. Ran, I–"

"It's all right," Ran cut in, now sorry she had been so harsh. "If you hadn't, Ebihara-san would have blackmailed Akira-san anyway and might never have been called, and Hiragami-san would have tried to kill me nonetheless, and might have succeeded. It was actually your original idea of calling in a detective and solving a case that uncovered both crimes." She thought of something. "What about Ikenami-san? I _refuse _to believe she poisoned herself–with a weak heart, too–simply to help–"

"Ikenami-san is a better actress than you think," Asama-san said, now rather amused. "You would be surprised to meet her real self–Sonoko's matchmaking idea enthralled her in the first place."

That couldn't be right. "It can't be right," Ran voiced. "Shinichi told me–"

"That was a, ah… protecting measure," Shinichi said, from the doorway. "At the time I didn't know exactly what place you occupied in this, Ran. I hadn't understood all of this–" he addressed a self-deprecating nod in Sakagushi-san's direction, "but I had guessed some of it. I suspected, rather, that there was more than simply met the eye in Hiragami-san's case. In fact he simply used Sonoko's idea to murder you, Ran." His lip was set as marble. "Clever of him, wasn't it."

_You know that if I find you've lied about anything else, _Ran's eyes glared at him, _I will never repeat last night again._

He gave her a crooked smile.

"So the case on Ikenami-san was more complex than it looked, too," he went on. "What else was faked? The screams? The poison? I know for sure Hiragami-san put more poison in the medicine, for there was far too much than anyone, especially a surgeon, would _ever_ put in."

"I have been to see Ikenami-san," Sonoko said, "while Ran was still out cold. She said she hadn't put any poison in the medicine in the first–she had just taken her medicine when she screamed. At the time she wanted to pretend someone had broken in her room. Then, apparently, she felt the effects of the poison, and screamed again–rather to alert people and get some help than because of pain, really."

Shinichi gave her a Look. "Why didn't you tell me that yesterday? You, too," he told Sakagushi-san, "you never told me you had shot yourself, _after_ we'd solved this case."

"I thought you, ah… were busy enough at the time," Sakagushi-san said delicately just as Sonoko opened her mouth to respond, and Ran flushed just like a schoolgirl, and Akira-san stumbled upon them all with a backpack on coasters and a travelling coat thrown over his arm.

"Well, gents," he said, seeing them assembled in the library and looking back at him in silent query, "I'm off. My train's at one. Asama-san, you said you'd drive me over–"

"I will," Asama-san said, and stood up. "Just let me get my things."

"Megure-keibu," Akira-san said, looking in the inspector's face more squarely than he had dared the day before, "if you need me for this blackmail affair–"

"I'll reach you," Megure-keibu said, completely poker-faced. "I have taken your coordinates from that butler person. And don't worry overmuch, boy," he added, not unkindly. "A good lawyer'll find you a loop to get out of this, and there are three excellent right here with us."

Akira-san smiled feebly and followed Asama-san out.

"You're leaving, too?" Ran asked Sakagushi-san, who was edging towards the door.

She smiled at them. "My job here is complete. _Our_ job here is complete," she said, with a toss of her head in Sonoko's direction. "What about you–the two of you. Are you staying some more?" She hadn't thought about that. Last night, she had to admit, she hadn't had _time_ to think.–She glanced over, uncertainly, at Sonoko.

"I'd be glad to keep you here a few more days," her friend said immediately. "To make up. Unless you'd rather not–I guess this place mustn't hold very happy memories for either of you," she said, ruefully.

"It wasn't all bad," Ran said.

"No," Shinichi agreed. "Some… parts… of it were excellent."

Ran glared at him half-heartedly. Sakagushi-san laughed. "Well, then," she said. "Goodbye. We'll see each other again soon." The _'at Hiragami-san's trial'_ remained unsaid, and Ran was grateful for that. She didn't know if she was ready to deal with that yet. Maybe Sonoko was right, and some kind of vacation was in order.

Sonoko followed Sakagushi-san out, with a mouthed–"Take your time"–and Akira-san coming prattling down the stairs again, he stuck his head in the door.

"Goodbye, everyone­–oh, it's just the two of you. Well–" he scratched his head in a gesture widely reminiscent of Takagi-keiji, "I was glad to meet you, despite–everything. Be sure to invite me at the wedding," he added, winked exaggeratedly, and skipped out again.

Ran was definitely feeling like a schoolgirl all over again, if the heat of her cheeks was any indication.

"Busted," Shinichi said beside her, and his voice had the laughing, flippant quality of the high school detective he once was–almost there, but not quite. "It's clear as day." His arms sneaked carelessly around Ran's waist.

"Do we have to be so stupidly embarrassed and cheesy as when we were seventeen?" she mumbled, not too loud, for his breath was coming out just right above the shell of her ear, and that was completely distracting–if anything.

"Hmm," Shinichi said. His forehead bumped against the back of her head. "We have ten years of life without one another to catch up on after all."

"Maybe what's worth caring for isn't what we've lost but what we've managed to save," Ran murmured, but she wasn't quite sure what exactly she meant. Shinichi's mouth was pressing against her hair and whispering insanities, and the sunlight, as Briggs pulled open the front double door, broke free and streamed on the hall's tiles and flooded in the library.

-

And. The End. Dun dun dun.

**(Well, not exactly the end. An omake ****ami-chan**** asked for is on its way in my bunch of Christmas drabbles–that should be coming up tonight. –is being gagged by muse before she gives plot away-)**

**Time for thanks, minna–it sounds terribly cliché to say I wouldn't have finished this without your reviews and feedback, but it's true. You've been beyond awesome, and trying to write up to your expectations was what made working on this story so enjoyable. I have others on the way, which I hope you'll like as much. :D**

**Cookies for you? cookies from me. X3**


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